Is it worth changing our blog post URL's?

[schof]

We're considering changing the URL's for our blog posts and dropping the date information.

Ex.

http://spreecommerce.com/blog/2012/07/27/spree-1-1-3-released/

changes to

http://spreecommerce.com/blog/spree-1-1-3-released/

Based on what I've learned here the new URL is better for SEO but since these pages already exist do we risk a minor loss of Google juice with 301 redirects?  We have a sitemap for the blog posts so I imagine this wouldn't be too hard for Google to learn the new ones.

[UnderRugSwept]

I did it to two client sites and neither lost any rankings. I used the Change Permalink Helper plugin, which made the redirects seamless. The most unfortunate thing about changing URL permalinks is the fact that if you have social sharing buttons on your posts, all the counts get reset to zero.

I must add that just because I didn't lose rankings doesn't mean there's not a chance, albeit a small one, that you will.