FRESH
Hacker News
Hacker News Hacker NewsThere is an Asian/Australian wave, followed by Europe, and the North America. Some of the best times are when the waves start to mix (ex: early morning NYC time, you’ll get the Europe and NA groups interacting).
You’ll see different types of stories posted. Similar enough to where it all makes sense to be on HN, but it seems like a different flavor. But the comments are where I start to see more differences. You can get new takes on the same article if you see the comments from different times of the day.
This doesn’t take into account the total numbers of people active from each region, which I suspect is skewed towards more users the US coasts. But, it does, I think, speak to how US centric HN is. I think it serves the needs each of the waves in a distinct way.
In many ways, this is just an extension of the weekend HN effect. You can clearly observe differences on the site over the weekends. So, to me, it is unsurprising that you’d find differences across time zones. I’d love to actually see this analyzed more. This is just the take from someone who has been awake at enough hours to observe some anecdotal trends.
35.1% United States
8.0% Germany
6.5% United Kingdom
5.4% Canada
3.1% Australia
3.0% France
2.7% Netherlands
2.6% India
2.4% Sweden
1.9% Poland
1.7% Switzerland
1.6% Spain
1.4% Japan
1.4% Belgium
1.3% Italy
1.1% Austria
1.1% Finland
1.0% Norway
1.0% Brazil
7.0% Other countries
51% US
5% United Kingdom
4% Germany
3% Australia, Canada, India
The rest are primarily European countries, with Sweden, Denmark, France, and Spain leading the way.
* Most people here use ad blockers. I imagine this data is incomplete and would reflect the mobile portion of the users. I don't log IP addresses.
Why would it not be US centered? YC is an US company.
Overall, US + Canada is 50 - 60%. UK + EU is 25 - 35%. You could find post that lands on HN frontage showing their stats.
Of course this is by far not comprehensive, but it gives you an idea of where the people are from.
Also, the other comment regarding the time zones is absolutely real. It's a fun experiment to check out Hacker News at unusual times of the day and observe the differences in content and especially in the comments section.