If you follow HN over the course of 24 hours, you’ll see at least 3 major waves. I tend to have an odd sleep schedule, so I’m always amused when I’m online to see which group is currently active.
There 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.
I've seen a few Brazilians (like me) lurking around sometimes, so certainly there are people from LatAm. I'd wager the distribution of countries that read Hacker News and the distribution for people who comment might be slightly different. The distributions linked in another comment seem somewhat unreal to me, but perhaps I'm just imagining every English-speaking person on the internet as an American LOL.
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.
Probably more to do with HN being a tech community, and the US is the largest highly developed country where a lot of kids can learn tech stuff. So you get a disproportionate number of programmers and related professionals who are American.
If Silicon Valley were in the UK I think most HN contributers would still be American.
If you follow HN over the course of 24 hours, you’ll see at least 3 major waves. I tend to have an odd sleep schedule, so I’m always amused when I’m online to see which group is currently active.
There 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.
I've seen a few Brazilians (like me) lurking around sometimes, so certainly there are people from LatAm. I'd wager the distribution of countries that read Hacker News and the distribution for people who comment might be slightly different. The distributions linked in another comment seem somewhat unreal to me, but perhaps I'm just imagining every English-speaking person on the internet as an American LOL.
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.
After years of lurking, I made some posts this year here. Here is what my Google Analytics and Substack traffic from HN shows:
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.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35567986
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44572750
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30210378
Wow, my initial guess would have been it's overwhelmingly full of Americans.
These comments from dang in 2018 are worth linking as well
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16633521
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16444556
>Would be curious: Is it US-centered? How much people from LatAm or SEA? EU?
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.
Probably more to do with HN being a tech community, and the US is the largest highly developed country where a lot of kids can learn tech stuff. So you get a disproportionate number of programmers and related professionals who are American.
If Silicon Valley were in the UK I think most HN contributers would still be American.
I imagine it's majority Americans. I'd guess over 70% Americans.