I'm with Brandon on this. The indicator on the backend is handy for sure, but I too didn't know about the release of version 1.1.3 when I was on 1.1 until very recently. I been keeping up with looking at StackIdeas too.
But I don't check the download page of the dashboard unless I know a new version is released. I'm sure I'd notice after a while that a maintenance release came out, but it might take many days. Major versions are not a problem because I check the road map pretty often.
So what Brandon and I probably want is either some sort of news letter or email notification of new releases of EasySocial. If a news letter was released, it would be really cool if the changes were mentioned inside of it. Now we don't want to over burden the stackideas team, but we already know that the change log is written with each release. So in theory if done right it could be as easy as a copy and paste with maybe a small change such as the version number from email to email. And a well thought out copy and paste method isn't being cheap considering that it gives the right info for your audience.
Just an idea. Not needed, but would be handy for keeping the customers up to date.