I haven't been using npm for a hugely long time, but every time I push out an update to one of my packages it sees a boon in downloads. Then that trails off. I assumed there was already a system in place that more or less keeps people up to date.
we do have something called the registry follower (https://github.com/npm/concurrent-couch-follower) that can help you achieve a similar outcome, but hooks provides more specificity around certain events and is also significantly more user friendly