You know that feeling when a product you love drops a new feature and you literally never hear about it? Yeah, that's the problem most companies face with their product updates.

I've been building Jottings for a while now, and early on, I made the classic mistake: I'd push a feature, write a boring changelog entry ("Fixed bug in jot creation"), and wonder why nobody cared. Then I realized something important: people don't ignore product updates because they're not interested—they ignore them because they're not interested enough.

Let me explain what changed that for me, and how you can make your product updates actually land with your audience.

Why Your Current Updates Are Invisible

Most product updates follow a predictable pattern:

• Feature name + description (2 sentences max)
• Maybe a screenshot if you're feeling fancy
• Posted to a changelog nobody visits

The problem? This format treats updates like a press release to shareholders, not a conversation with people who chose to use your product. When was the last time you actively read a changelog? Exactly.

There's also a psychological element here. We're drowning in notifications. Your users get emails from dozens of apps every week. A generic "New Feature Released" subject line has about as much chance as a spam email.

But here's the counterintuitive part: your users do want to know what's happening in your product. They want to feel like they're part of something. They want to understand the "why" behind changes. They just need you to tell the story in a way that's actually worth their time.

The Psychology of Readable Updates

Think about the last product update you actually read. Was it from a major brand? Probably not. It was probably from a smaller company or founder you felt connected to—someone who treated you like a human instead of a user number.

Why does this work? Because it taps into three psychological principles:

First, reciprocity. When someone shares something genuine and valuable with you (not trying to sell you), you naturally want to pay attention. A thoughtful update that explains why a decision was made is more valuable than a feature list.

Second, specificity. Generic updates get skimmed. Specific stories get read. "We fixed performance" is forgettable. "A bug was causing jots with 50+ tags to load 3 seconds slower—we traced it to an N+1 query and rebuilt the entire tagging system" is interesting. It shows you actually know what you're doing.

Third, transparency. People respect honesty. If something broke and you fixed it, just say that. If a feature didn't work the way you planned, share what you learned. This builds trust in ways marketing copy never can.

Storytelling Over Feature Lists

Here's my framework for writing product updates that people actually want to read:

Start with the problem. Don't lead with the solution. Lead with the frustration. "You know how annoying it is to manually create tags for every post? Yeah, we were frustrated too." Now you have attention because it's relatable.

Explain what you discovered. This is where you show your thinking. What did you learn while building this? What surprised you? What did users tell you that pointed you in this direction? People love getting a behind-the-scenes look.

Show what changed. Now introduce the feature. But don't just list functionality—explain what it feels like to use it. Make it concrete.

Share the impact. This is the data moment, but make it human. Instead of "10% faster load time," try "Pages now load 300ms faster on average, which means you can navigate through 10 pages of your archive in the time it used to take to load 6."

Close with where you're heading. Give people a sense of momentum. What's next? What problems are you thinking about? This makes the update feel like the beginning of a story, not an isolated announcement.

Format and Frequency Matter (A Lot)

You don't need to send updates constantly. In fact, that's what kills readership. People unsubscribe from daily newsletters. They don't unsubscribe from infrequent-but-valuable ones.

My rule of thumb: update when you've built something worth reading about. That might be weekly for a fast-moving startup. It might be monthly for a mature product. What matters is consistency and quality.

Also consider format. Some people want emails. Some want to check a blog. Some want RSS feeds. Some want to see updates as a feed of posts within the product itself. The best approach? Make it available everywhere but not push it everywhere. Let people opt in to how they want to receive updates.

Jottings as Your Update Log

This is where I'll be honest about why I'm talking about this at all—I built Jottings partly because I wanted a better way to share what we're building.

Instead of a traditional changelog buried in docs, imagine your product updates as a personal blog. You can:

• Write updates in a conversational tone without worrying about a corporate voice
• Include multiple types of content (text, links, images)
• Let people subscribe via RSS or share individual updates
• Build archives that show your entire journey (not just the last 10 updates)
• Customize the look so it feels like your product, not a generic changelog

The best part? When updates are part of a blog or journal, they naturally fit into a broader narrative about your product's evolution. People can see patterns. They can understand your priorities. They can feel the momentum.

Your users aren't ignoring you because they don't care. They're ignoring generic updates because they're not compelling enough to fight through inbox fatigue.

Start Here

If you're going to change one thing about how you share product updates, make it this: write the update for a friend, not an audience.

Tell them what you built and why it matters. Explain what surprised you. Be honest about what didn't work. Let them see the real thinking behind the decisions.

That's how you write product updates that people actually read. And if you want a simple, beautiful way to share those updates with the world, well... I built something for that.

Start writing updates that matter. Your users are waiting to hear from you—they're just tired of shouting into the void.