It’s quite easy to forget these days that not everyone is on the same time zone as you. Just because it’s the middle of the day for you, it doesn’t mean that everyone is up and voting on Digg.
Take as example this story that I posted about an hour ago and submitted it to Sphinn soon after. If you take a look at what Alexa has to say about the country that sends the biggest number of visitors to Sphinn, you’ll see that the US has about 55% of traffic. Anyone cares to guess what time it was in the US when I submitted my story? 1PM in my country and probably around 5AM in US. Now, by the time the americans will start waking up, my story will slip from the upcoming page and its chances of hitting the front page are reduced considerably. Granted, it may just as well be too weak to make it in the first place, but now I’ll probably never know.
Same goes for stories submitted to Digg, Reddit or any other social media site where there is a 24 hour window to get enough votes for the front page.
But this doesn’t apply just to social media. It’s the same case with online auctions. If you open an auction on DigitalPoint or a thread where you offer your services, you got a better shot if it’s not 4AM in the US. If you start an auction that ends in 48 hours and it starts at 4AM, then it will end at the same hour, and there will be less people online that would bid.
Of course, this can also be to your advantage if you’re the one trying to buy something. Bidding in an auction that ends when there is less activity on the site should improve your chances of getting it at a cheaper price.
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