I've been thinking about the usefulness of internal blogs a lot lately, and there's definitely some value in them. Apparently, I'm not the only one who feels this way. IBM has 3600 internal blogs, and Kevin Briody recently posted about how internal blogs at Microsoft could be used.

First, some history. The Sagestone blogs started as an internal blog. Then, one day, it was public. There was some scrambling to ensure that no confidential information was exposed - something that's OK for internal consumption, but not external consumption.

When the blogs were internal, I think posting was a lot easier - you could post much more detailed code samples without fear of conveying private information. You could easily inform your peers of recent client wins, or detailed project status. It's also a good way to communicate with your team - recently, Scott Hanselman posted an email he had to send around - this could have just been a post on an internal blog - if everyone on the team buys into it.

Kevin's post has easy ways to get that buy-in by suggesting private-labeled versions of an RSS reader that has a pre-defined OPML already available. On the other hand, isn't Newsgator in the process of testing an Enterprise solution? Could that be used for enforced delivery of important internal blogs?

Anyway, I think there's some unrealized benefits from internal blogs if they can be discovered easily. If not, they become as useful as most intranet sites - you'll find it when you need something, but you won't use it on a regular basis.

Note to NuSoft employees: I heard rumors of internal blogs coming, but nothing more than that yet. Personally, I think it would be awesome. There's lots of code I could share there!