What are Dark Blogs?

Posted on June 27, 2005

Dark blogs are the blogs hidden behind corporate firewalls that the public does not have access to. Many companies are using dark blogs because they speed up internal communications and allow information to be shared within the corporation. Disney was recently discovered to be using dark blogs.

A recent post from Strange Attractor provides a good explanation of dark blogs:

There is, however, a 'dark matter' of blogs which we know exists but which we cannot observe directly. These 'dark blogs' are those used internally by companies for purposes such as team management, event logging, cross-shift communications or knowledge sharing. Because dark blogs are behind the firewall we can't see them, can't evaluate their usefulness or find out what hurdles had to be jumped in their implementation.
Yet, because blogs are easy to use, flexible and cost-effective, they are an obvious choice for business use. Coupled with RSS feeds, aggregators, and other social software, it is possible to create a powerful knowledge sharing system which can be used with minimal training and IT outlay.

These types of blogs are also being called private corporate blogs or internal blogs.