My thoughts when writing this were that some companies are promoting blogs. Not all of them, but some are. It's a marketing effort to be sure, but it does allow some people to express themselves. For places like Microsoft, it gives them a little more human face.

Not all developers want to write, or speak, or share what they do. But some do and a blog is an easy way to do that. You might want to get into speaking or maybe show off some knowledge without the formal editing that comes with other publication methods. Or you may not want to lead a brown bag session, but you'll write. Or you may not want to do either.

The thing about technical blogging is that you can promote yourself in a way that can be hard to do elsewhere. Publication is a hassle and having someone change/edit your words can be annoying. Some don't care, some do, so as Andy mentioned, this gives you another medium to communicate.

You definitely have to be careful about what you write. You don't want to write things that offend people, but you can explain how you figured something out. And promote yourself as well. To some extent the company takes a chance by allowing you some exposure. You might leave for another job!

I'd say that blogging (personal, professional, or corporate) is worth trying. You might love it. Might hate it. Could be a team building thing. Might be a way to get FAQs out there quickly. Might be a way to show off your own project and even get help. I've seen all of these. Jamie Thomson (http://blogs.conchango.com/jamiethomson/) does a great job of professional blogging as a consultant and we track his stuff in the Database Weekly newsletter. Oren Eini has a project he blogs about (http://ayende.com/Blog/category/486.aspx), though I think he mixes things up with personal stuff too much. Jonathan Schwartz does a great corporate blog (http://blogs.sun.com/jonathan/), but he's the CEO. I think the PSS engineers for SQL Server have a great blog (http://blogs.msdn.com/psssql/).

Just for the record, Andy wrote this Doing the CTRL-A, CTRL-C thing now.