📰 Proposed press release for version 3.0 - feedback welcome!

Hello,

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 – although it’s probably a bit on the lengthy side.

Note that it includes a mention of Freehive - I will check with them first if they’re OK with us mentioning them here. Therefore please do not (yet) publicly use or distribute this article.

Curious to hear if there’s any comments!
AntennaPod adds home screen in 3.0 release.pdf (188.9 KB)
AntennaPod adds home screen in 3.0 release.docx (163.7 KB)
AntennaPod adds home screen in 3.0 release.odt (182.9 KB)

I’d be happy to hear any concrete comments!

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@ByteHamster As you can see, I dated the release for coming Wednesday. Do you think that’s realistic? I saw the update just went live to beta testers.

I don’t think there will be a single “release day”. 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.

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How about changing the opening Free to Open Source? I’m 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.

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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 ‘Android AntennaPod’ was the name of the app) and it doesn’t 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 “AntennaPod” adds new Home screen and gets brand refresh in 3.0 release

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Hi, as discussed during our community call yesterday: Here’s a first draft of the German translation - any feedback welcome!

AntennaPod mit neuem Start-Bildschirm in Version 3.0.pdf (179.1 KB)

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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 “ad-free and gratis” sound a bit odd. Can’t we just say “free and open source” or “free and without ads”, so readers know what we’re talking about?
  • I wonder if talking about a “brand refresh” is a real selling point. My gut reaction as a non-user would be “Great for them. And what’s in it for me?”. Maybe just say “new look” or “new design”?
  • I wouldn’t 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.

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I didn’t want to focus ‘open source’ too prominent, because most regular Android (app) blogs/websites don’t know or care about this.

Yes, let’s 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: ‘and without ads’ isn’t an adjective that fits in the sentence. (As explained above, I don’t feel like going for ‘open source’.) I went for “free and ad-free”.

I’ve 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 ‘quick to read’ goal.

AntennaPod adds home screen in 3.0 release_v03.pdf (189.3 KB)
AntennaPod adds home screen in 3.0 release.docx (160.7 KB, with tracked changes)

Would this be a better fit for the blog or for the documentation section?

I think it’d 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 ‘Continue listening’ excludes items which have a starting time of 00:00:00. It’s a bad example because I wouldn’t actually include this, but just to indicate that we can go more in-depth. Also it would have a more ‘selling’ than ‘explaining’ tone.

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@loucasal If & when you have the time, I’d be curious to hear if you think if properly & sufficiently addressed your comments :innocent:

If yes, @femmdi can start updating the DE translation and reach out to other translators :slight_smile:

Thanks @keunes - you did! Just a final edit for grammar/clarity:

  • ‘an exercise led by the design company…’ (if you want to include both verbs, I guess it should be ‘led and contributed to’? It doesn’t sound great though.)
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Update: Ryan from Freehive gave the green light!

For the ‘contributed’ phrase, I settled on “an exercise that is lead by and a contribution of” - a wee bit clearer I hope.

AntennaPod adds home screen in 3.0 release.docx (160.8 KB)
AntennaPod adds home screen in 3.0 release.odt (182.2 KB)
AntennaPod adds home screen in 3.0 release.pdf (189.4 KB)

I guess we’re ready for translations! (CC @femmdi)

Edit: I’ll make a version with the correct date & without tracked changes once we’re ready.

Here comes the updated German translation - I left the date as “March 2023” - we can update it later. It would be good if another German speaker could read through it :smiley:

AntennaPod mit neuem Start-Bildschirm in Version 3.0.pdf (178.0 KB)

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I also made a graphic to showcase the home screen:

@ByteHamster I must admit that I don’t 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).

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Looks nice! Are these cover images we are allowed to use?

I have not explicitly requested permission, if that’s what you’re 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 it’s fine to use.

Will do a french translation before tomorrow evening if no else does it before. Didn’t have much time before. :confused:
Is there a deadline?

I also think it doesn’t matter too much if press release is not converted for all languages. It’s 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)

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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 “official” screenshots (and I think a blog post is quite official), I’m 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) Google’s approval process (which seems to take quite a bit longer for now) and b) the number of new types of crashes we’re getting back from the slowed roll-out. We’ll mention it when we have a deadline in sight :slight_smile:

Journalists (like anyone of us I guess) prefer to be ‘lazy’ 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 we’re trying to reach we identified FR, DE & IT as target languages for now.

That’s what I was saying: having your work (as a ‘neutral’ 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 ‘degree of association’) is (slightly) different. Therefore I think we’re 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.)