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Comment by crozewski | Hacker News Reader

I think 8:30am is a bit late to send the news. I think a lot of people who work "traditional" hours are already up, out the door, and have made a dent in their day. I like to read the news before I get started.

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How many people still work traditional hours? How many of those people would be interested in an email news service? Seems entirely reasonable to me that the intersection might be small, and that the people who want to read the news at 6 AM would not be interested in doing so by email.

I usually wake around 6:00 and check my mail. For me the best is a short summary of stories on email, say the first 4-5 lines of each item, and clickable. If a web page was customizable, that would be fine too, but as the OP says, if you are already in email it is easiest to stay in email.

I have no data, but I bet you're an exception. People read emails when they get to work (yes, even personal emails); by sending them at 8:30, they get the email to reach people when they're already at their desk or at least at the top of the queue (since emails clients sort from newer to older).

If they sent it sooner, by the time people sat down and opened their inboxes, the email would already have been "submerged" under a bunch of others sent afterwards.

I actually did tons of A/B testing and 8:30am works way better than 6am (in terms of open rates). Honestly I've no idea why, but I have a few theories.

6AM? Barely anyone is awake.

I used that to compare because a lot of others email out at that time: Digg, WSJ, Quartz, etc.

I just subscribed, and 8:30am would be great, but I did not see an option to set my timezone.

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