IntranetBlog's Toby Ward recently said that "IBM has the best intranet in the world." That's a strong statement, but you'll have a rare opportunity to see for yourself when IBM gives the world a look on Thursday, June 12.

The downside? That sneak peek of W3, IBM's intranet, will cost you $195, which is what Community Intelligence thinks the privilege is worth. Sounds like it's time to browse LinkedIn to find your old buddy from IBM to let you look for free.

Granted, this Webcast will be a guided tour to some of the site's best features, including these high points:

• An employee directory called Blue Pages that gets more than 1.5 million hits per day
• Some 1,600 bloggers
• Support for audio and video podcasts
• Internal wikis for documentation and product information
• Beehive, IBM's internal answer to Facebook
• Multiple internal forums
• Search capability intended to return information for virtually every internal project.

That's pretty compelling content, and the best practices alone are certain to be eye opening. The breadth of the content and the dollars and development hours that IBM has invested in the site are likely to make a lot of intranet managers out there very jealous.

So, is W3 an outstanding site that's worth learning from and emulating? Sure.

Is it worth $195, or $255 with a CD recording of the Webcast, to take a guided tour? You'll need to be the judge.