When “Inform” Doesn’t

In the past year, FOLIO has made radical changes to their website. Some of them I like. Some of them I love. This post isn’t about any of them, but about the one thing I really don’t like.

FOLIO is now hyperlinking names and companies to other results on the FOLIO site. So when you click on the "Publishers Information Bureau" on this article it doesn’t take you to the Publishers Information Bureau, but instead to other FOLIO articles referencing the Publishers Information Bureau. This technology is powered by Inform.

Editors of the magazine might think I’m complaining as an advertiser, but I think it’s a question about what readers expect when clicking a link. More often than not, they’re expecting a destination link, and not someone’s commentary about that destination.

FOLIO’s use of Inform appears to be mighty inconsistent, too. Articles like the last one use Inform throughout. This article links a few things to the Inform results but none to external sites and this one uses only external site links. In the end, readers expect consistency and we’re not getting it.

Incidentally, all three articles are good, content-wise and are must-reads. It’s their use of linking that is wildly inconsistent.