I think what we're all *really* talking about here is the relationship between the social Web and corporate transparency. The rise in democratized media demands a corresponding fall in corporate walls. The revolution is no longer televised, now it’s “Twitterized.”

Public pricing is one manifestation of “openness.” There are many others. An association called WorldBlu does a remarkable job at tracking the world’s most transparent companies. It’s definitely worth checking them out.

From Eloqua’s standpoint, we also opened our customer portal recently. Every company that endeavors to be more transparent should be applauded. But the larger the audience the more complex the decision. In other words, it's one thing to open a community that contains a handful of members, and something else entirely to throw the doors open to one that consists of tens of thousands.

This was usually when we didn't have a very distinct product or a competitive lead. Or, more often, when price was the area on which we competed with others.

However, where we were market leader or had a genuine USP, then we could confidently publish our prices safe in the knowledge our customers REALLY wanted to work with us.

I guess, therefore, whether you publish your prices or not depends also depends on how confident you are in your product.