Ross Martin's business cards say he's senior vice president, MTV 360 Development and Productions, but according to his own description, his job involves, meeting with "the most fascinating people in the world."

"In. The. World," he emphasizes.

"And they are in and out of this building," he says, gesturing around his corner office on the 23rd floor of the Viacom unit's headquarters at 1515 Broadway on a recent afternoon. "You can't keep it to yourself."

Martin keeps little that goes on in his office to himself. MTV 360 crosses MTV, MTV2, and mtvU, and incorporates music content, alternative formats, and branded entertainment on various platforms from TV to the Web and mobile.

At times, he's transformed his workspace into a broadcasting studio, inviting colleagues and friends to perform, as when he hosted a glockenspiel recital by an unsigned artist named Amalia Bruun in September and promptly posted it on the Web. One side of Martin's office faces directly into the rooms of the Marriott Marquis Times Square, and guests sometimes photograph the strange goings-on. That is, when they're not exposing themselves to him and other MTV employees ("There's a lot of naked people, and I always look for them," Martin says) in an almost too-on-the-nose display of "transparency."

Transparency of another sort can be found on Martin's blog, Something Burning, as when he complained about a launch-party invitation last week: "I admit I was a little disappointed…" he wrote, probably to the chagrin of at least a few people in MTV's art and promotions departments.

Like a slew of other executives, Martin has taken to blogging and using Twitter and social media to share details from his work and life, reach out to potential collaborators, and spitball ideas publicly. Whether he intends it to be or not, Martin is part of a movement, with players like Sun Microsystems president and CEO Jonathan Schwartz, Dallas Mavericks owner and HDNet chairman Mark Cuban, Best Buy chief marketing officer Barry Judge, and Kodak's CMO Jeffrey Hayzlett.

Each of these executives is doing his part to transform corporate culture from one of secrecy to a wired, early 21st century brand of transparency and two-way communication. Far from cultivating an air of mystique around themselves or their companies, they're reaching out—occasionally lashing out—in ways that would've seemed risky or downright insane to executives a generation ago.

The embrace of these technologies is not without its risks. In March, Cuban was fined $25,000 for a Twitter post criticizing a referee during a Mavericks-Denver Nuggets game. He gladly paid the fine, tweeting, "Can't say no one makes money from Twitter now. The NBA does."

"When I tweeted about the officiating in the NBA, I knew I would get fined," the billionaire entrepreneur, who made a fortune selling Broadcast.com to Yahoo, tells Portfolio.com via email as he awaited a Mavericks-San Antonio Spurs game last week.

"I also knew that my number of followers would grow considerably. It was well worth the cost to expand my twitter reach."