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Comment by blantonl | Hacker News Reader

Why on earth would you want to remain anonymous on social platforms as an entrepreneur? Frankly, most of your businesses' success rides on who is running the show, and investors and customers want to know about who is running the show. Even if you don't want a social media profile, that is OK. But to insist on an anonymous one? Why?

Seriously, for an entrepreneur, what is the motivation for having an anonymous social media account?

I certainly understand the issue of one's privacy, but if you are expecting to run a successful online business, your identity will need to be defined across the social media platforms. If that profile is not defined and you are a successful entrepreneur, your profile will be created for you (in wiki style).

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Wanting support for pseudonymity doesn't mean you're always using it. I can see someone using a non-anon account by day, anon during off-time.

I still pose the question "why?" In social media, the reason you created your account is to socialize. I don't understand why in the context of developing and managing a business, one needs an anonymous profile.

Because you don't want your opinions and tastes unrelated to your business to be associate with your business.

Because an entrepreneur should also have the ability to be an activist.

Well for one, in the context of developing and managing a business, secrecy is often of paramount importance. Why does Apple go apeshit every time an engineer of theirs leaves a prototype phone in a bar? Shouldn't they just relax and enjoy the free publicity?

There might be times when you want to communicate with people on a topic, without their being aware of who you are and what you do for a living, which could color the conversation or potentially even jeopardize your business.

Maybe you need to maintain contacts and industry awareness without alerting your competitors to your every move or to who your clients are. Maybe you are a victim of corporate espionage. Maybe you find yourself in the unenviable position of needing to both develop and manage a business and be a whistle-blower at the same time. There are any number of potential reasons.

Most of us don't walk around with a big sign around our neck with our full name when we socialize. Most of us don't even do that during work even with customer facing jobs, and plenty of companies that do require name tags allow pseudonyms.

We socialize without tieing things to our full name all the time. Why should online be different?

Who said anything about entrepreneurs? Most Google+ users and not entrepreneurs and don't want to be entrepreneurs.

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