Making information work

Boeing recently updated some aspects of their corporate blogs. The perhaps most positive change is the addition of the possibility to comment on each and every post, and the perhaps oddest change is the move to a new domain.

The move to boeingblogs.com perplexes me. I just don’t get it. It is not like the domain is any less affiliated with Boeing, the only difference is that it is older, has fewer links, and keeps traffic possibly away from Boeing.com.

This might be a good time to remind you that I am inherently Boeing-positive. This whole post is very likely biased in Boeings favor.

A couple of other things happened in the change – some slight design modifications, a change of the feed location (come on, you can’t advertise a feed URL change only on the new location!) and they even updated the copyright date in the footer. But the oddest change has to be the change to boeingblogs.com. Why not www.boeingblogs.com? And why, oh why, is there no index-page with links to active and old Boeing blogs?

And, if there are any Boeing screeners looking for some constructive criticism, here it is:

1. Use a 301 permanent redirect from the old www.boeing.com URL for the blog to the new one. The 302 temporary in use today is not as effective in communicating that the address is permanently moved, and does not redirect link value in the same way
2. The link to “Additional terms” in the last paragraph of the “Guidelines” section of Randy’s blog is broken. Remove the period at the end of the URL.

Oh, I just thought of something – I read somewhere that there was some behavior labeled as “ambulance chasing” by fellow online communications consultants in regards to some aspects of the JetBlue disaster last month. I rationalize my behavior here as something much kinder than that, since I am not forcing my suggestions onto Boeing. If they want it, they can take it. If they don’t, I will receive the exact same compensation as if they do – namely nothing.

David