Ask HN: How do you tell your users about your new features?

I'd use a lightly blinking notice box at the top of your screen, just below the header. Let it disappear when not clicked within 5 seconds or so. Give a teaser, with a link to take the tour around new features. Only do that when you have several that are worth the time to learn about. BTW - I'm from a marketing/sales background and just getting into IT/Comp.Sc. maybe we can learn from eachother? My email is in my profile.

What about showing each user who logins a summary of what's new? It could be in a modal, or could just be a brief area with a link at the top of the page, perhaps pointing to your blog post?

(Also an engineer)

It depends on the size of the update. From my experience in social gaming and consumer web, we use tooltips and login modals greetings for most changes. For more significant ones, we use blog posts (kind of like doing a press release) and then email all users to let them know. As long as you have a unsubscribe link, you're not going to be considered a spammer especially if they signed up for your service. The benefit of engaging with users (increasing conversions and building community) outweighs the cost of annoying your fringe users (churn).

This is an interesting experiment on emailing users. http://searchengineland.com/extreme-email-experiment-how-muc...

What about the way Facebook does it? Short message stating the new feature and a basic tour of what to click.