WHAT TIME IS IT?

And what is the best time to upload your post to Steemit?

Back when I was still fresh and new to Steemit, four days ago, I asked this question because I was totally clueless. But now I’m an old hand with several days experience under my belt, and I know what time it is.

(If this post just disappears without trace and nobody ever sees it, please ignore the previous statement)

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This is my hypothesis:

The peak time for internet use is 7pm to 10pm (most people surf in the evening)

The biggest portion of Steemit users seem to live in the US. (A big hole in my theory is that I don’t know where whales live)

The US has a three hour time zone variation from west to east coast. And globally of course, we have a full 24 hour cycle.

The optimum time for your post to pop up at the top of the Steemit feed as a new post is probably around 7pm. But 7pm is occurring at a different moment depending on where you live, so we have to compromise a bit here and aim to get it to pop up at 7pm in California, while in New York which is 3 hours ahead, it pops up at 10pm. Then all of the middle of the US will see it somewhere in between, which should do nicely.

This is all a bit Americentric so far, so before going any further I will mention that I live in New Zealand (first place to see the rising sun), and we are 19 hours ahead of the west coast of the US.

But barely anyone actually lives in New Zealand, just a few farmers with no internet connections, and 30 million sheep. There are less than 12 people in NZ using Steemit.

So we really need to aim for an American audience, who speak a mangled but still recognizable version of the English language, and who are flocking to Steemit like miners to a gold rush.

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How can anyone who lives outside of America work out what time 7pm in downtown LA is?

If you live in New Zealand, nearly everybody else on the planet is living in yesterday. Take a moment to think about why that makes NZ cutting edge and superior to everywhere else, then just concentrate on the hours.

http://www.timeanddate.com/worldclock/converter.html

Using a time zone converter, we find that 7pm in California USA is currently 2pm (the next day) in Wellington NZ.

Moving further round the globe, if for example you live in the nether regions of Australia (Perth) you end up at 10am.

If you live even further into the nether regions (the darklands beyond Australia) or maybe in London, it would be really early and inconvenient to post things on Steemit in California time because you would be eating your breakfast or sleeping.

So if the optimum time to upload your post to Steemit is 7pm in California, your optimum local times would be:

7pm in California
10pm in New York
3am in London
5am in Moscow
10am in Perth, Australia
12 noon in Sydney, Australia
2pm in New Zealand

But what if we can’t post at the optimum time? The 8 hours following is not ideal, as US is asleep, so we need to go earlier.

The next best time would be in the three hours before the optimum time, when at least the East coast of the US is home from work.

Third best would be the 8 or so hours prior to that, when most Americans are working.

Just to complicate matters, in a couple of months the Northern hemisphere will go off Daylight Saving and the Southern will go on. This will make the optimum time for those of us down under two hours later.

So to distill this all down to a useful rule of thumb, that applies all year round, the best time to post is:

America & Canada – when you get home from work
UK & Europe, through to Russia – right before you go to bed
Australia – between breakfast and lunch
New Zealand – after lunch

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SIFT666 aka Ian Gregson is a sheep farmer from New Zealand. In between shearing and drenching he likes to surf the internet and dreams of one day having his own website portal like https://www.frot.co.nz

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