Internal Blog Uses
From CEO Bloggers' Club:
"Blog is an individual tool with impact both on the blogger and the reader/commenter. It can act as a filter of captured and evolving knowledge, it is a content management system that is sufficiently simple to be flexible and sufficiently robust to be effective. The features that make a blog an ideal tool for emergent knowledge management is speed, flexibility, interactivity, and ability to spread information outward."
All this (and there's more) is interesting, but maybe a bit too good to be true. Consider for example the fact that many people just don't want to share information or knowledge. Right or wrong, they believe it could threaten their positions. Consider that writing is something many people hate to do, even if it's only a comment. Or consider the bottom-up approach that is fundamental to the author's view and conclusions. This we have been talking about and trying to achieve long before anyone had ever heard the word "blog". Most have failed, not because of shortcomings in their tools but because their corporate cultures don't allow it - no matter what senior management officially says.
Don't get me wrong. I believe that for most organizations blogs will be more used internally than externally. The tool will find it's place. It won't come as easy as the post indicates, that's my point. Anyway, as an idea of how blogs could help your internal collaboration under perfect circumstances, the post is well worth reading.