I prepared a press release based on the main points from the 3.0 release notes. I tried my best making it press release-worthy â although itâs probably a bit on the lengthy side.
Note that it includes a mention of Freehive - I will check with them first if theyâre OK with us mentioning them here. Therefore please do not (yet) publicly use or distribute this article.
@ByteHamster As you can see, I dated the release for coming Wednesday. Do you think thatâs realistic? I saw the update just went live to beta testers.
I donât think there will be a single ârelease dayâ. I plan to do a staged roll-out over a few weeks, and when it is at 100%, release on F-Droid. In the past, we received most bug reports not during the beta, but during the staged roll-out to production.
How about changing the opening Free to Open Source? Iâm not sure if AntennaPod has a philosophical stand on the choice of word here, but I do think the suggested phrasing stands a higher chance to avoid making the very first word to cause the press release to be discarded.
Free podcasting app for Android AntennaPod adds new Home screen and gets brand refresh in 3.0 release
In the title, I keep reading the words Android and AntennaPod together (as though âAndroid AntennaPodâ was the name of the app) and it doesnât sound right.
It either needs a comma between the words:
Free podcasting app for Android, AntennaPod adds new Home screen and gets brand refresh in 3.0 release
or, perhaps better:
Free podcasting app AntennaPod for Android adds new Home screen and gets brand refresh in 3.0 release
UPDATE:
or, as has been done in the German version, use quotes:
Free podcasting app for Android âAntennaPodâ adds new Home screen and gets brand refresh in 3.0 release
Assuming this is targeted towards non-users and outlets with limited space for external content, I find it a bit too long to be honest.
Also, some more specific feedback:
I find unusual periphrases such as âad-free and gratisâ sound a bit odd. Canât we just say âfree and open sourceâ or âfree and without adsâ, so readers know what weâre talking about?
I wonder if talking about a âbrand refreshâ is a real selling point. My gut reaction as a non-user would be âGreat for them. And whatâs in it for me?â. Maybe just say ânew lookâ or ânew designâ?
I wouldnât necessarily delve into explaining new features (such as the Home screen) in detail here. (see below)
Still with the aim of keeping this quick to read, perhaps some paragraphs could be replaced with bullet points?
Aside from this press release, in recent weeks I was thinking about a series of blog posts showcasing some advanced and non-obvious features that AntennaPod has gained in recent times. Perhaps the idea could be expanded to cover new features, even if they are very evident to users (e.g. the Home screen).
If there is interest, we can get a separate discussion started.
I didnât want to focus âopen sourceâ too prominent, because most regular Android (app) blogs/websites donât know or care about this.
Yes, letâs go for that.
I agree. Maybe your other suggestion can be a solution:
I love this, and have been thinking about this (specifically in the context of newly added features) myself. For the home screen I already started making some scribbles, which I can share in a new thread. Would you mind creating the new thread?
I thought of this as a solution to the length problem, because, with a dedicated blog post, we can cut those parts out and just add a link to the detailed description.
Fair point. Problem for the lead: âand without adsâ isnât an adjective that fits in the sentence. (As explained above, I donât feel like going for âopen sourceâ.) I went for âfree and ad-freeâ.
Iâve not seen bullet points being used in press releases before, so I would be a bit wary of that. The shorter paragraphs should already help towards the âquick to readâ goal.
I think itâd be better as a blog post. It can be a nice place to explain how things works in the background. For example it would allow us to share that the âContinue listeningâ excludes items which have a starting time of 00:00:00. Itâs a bad example because I wouldnât actually include this, but just to indicate that we can go more in-depth. Also it would have a more âsellingâ than âexplainingâ tone.
Thanks @keunes - you did! Just a final edit for grammar/clarity:
âan exercise led by the design companyâŚâ (if you want to include both verbs, I guess it should be âled and contributed toâ? It doesnât sound great though.)
Here comes the updated German translation - I left the date as âMarch 2023â - we can update it later. It would be good if another German speaker could read through it
@ByteHamster I must admit that I donât really know/remember what the motivation is behind the Manage downloads section (I noticed it was not in my initial mock-ups). So I just invented a reason, but if you have any better text for it, please let me know (same for any other text).
I have not explicitly requested permission, if thatâs what youâre after. But given that the majority is open source and public broadcasters, combined with the fact that this is a one-off explainer and not standard promotional material (like the play store), I say itâs fine to use.
Will do a french translation before tomorrow evening if no else does it before. Didnât have much time before.
Is there a deadline?
I also think it doesnât matter too much if press release is not converted for all languages. Itâs often in news to have quoted info in English and the reviewer usually take excerpt and translate it. (Besides giving a link to the original source)
For the Google Play screenshots, a German public broadcaster denied my request to use their logo. Even a small science podcast told me that we can only show some of their episode covers because they already had problems with licensing. So for âofficialâ screenshots (and I think a blog post is quite official), Iâm a bit careful.
Not for now. We can only send it when v 3.0 is available on Google Play & F-Droid, and much depends on a) Googleâs approval process (which seems to take quite a bit longer for now) and b) the number of new types of crashes weâre getting back from the slowed roll-out. Weâll mention it when we have a deadline in sight
Journalists (like anyone of us I guess) prefer to be âlazyâ if they can be, so taking out one step in their process by providing a translation increases our chance of being picked up. But indeed, no need to get it in all languages. Based on this list of outlets that weâre trying to reach we identified FR, DE & IT as target languages for now.
Thatâs what I was saying: having your work (as a âneutralâ broadcaster) used in permanent promotion of a product (even if open source) is something else than being featured one time in a blog post or on social media in a product explainer. The exposure is much less (with it the chance of license issues) and the purpose/aim (with it the âdegree of associationâ) is (slightly) different. Therefore I think weâre safe here.
(Happy to include my personal name, in case anyone ever complaints or makes a claim about this graphic they can point to me.)
