Morning links or evening?

by David Alpert • October 28, 2008 6:19 pm

I'm curious: sometimes I post sets of links in the morning, sometimes in the evening. Should I standardize? What's the best time of day for you to get a post with a lot of individual news stories to click through to? Is it better to see them as you get home at the end of the day, or first thing in the morning? I suppose if I post them in the evening, they're still there in the morning...

12 comments

Tags: meta

Submit tips here (Mar 17, 2009)
Related posts (Mar 3, 2009)
Enjoy better URLs, list of active posts (Oct 31, 2010)
Friday meta-discussion: How're the related links? (Mar 27, 2009)
Breakfast non-links: Have a great weekend (Sep 4, 2009)

David Alpert is the Founder and Editor-in-Chief of Greater Greater Washington and Greater Greater Education. He worked as a Product Manager for Google for six years and has lived in the Boston, San Francisco, and New York metro areas in addition to Washington, DC. He loves the area which is, in many ways, greater than those others, and wants to see it become even greater.

Comments
Add a comment »

Morning is great!

by Matt on Oct 28, 2008 6:24 pm • link • report

Morning links is better because it makes me think of sausage, and thus makes me happy.

by Lindemann on Oct 28, 2008 7:05 pm • link • report

Think of sausage? Why?

For me, evening links work better. More time to sit and read and enjoy and consider. Thanks!

by Mitch on Oct 28, 2008 7:37 pm • link • report

Sausage links are typically eaten for breakfast, when they are eaten. ThusL in the morning. Thus: morning links.

"Evening links" does not have the same set of savory associations and is thus not the preferred alternative. (My head is soaked in NEPA lately.)

by Lindemann on Oct 28, 2008 7:39 pm • link • report

Why not just name it "Of Interest: Today's Roundup"? And instead of two postings a day comprised of linked tidbits, one comprehensive, late-afternoon or early evening entry should suffice.

by Hmm ... on Oct 28, 2008 7:55 pm • link • report

How about "whenever you get around to it", or "whenver there's links of interest available"?

by Froggie on Oct 28, 2008 10:19 pm • link • report

People will continue to open their RSS readers when they want, and if there is a new links post, people will read it. If not, I think we can wait 12 hours for a new post. It doesn't break my heart when I open my reader and I don't find a new post from GGW.

I tend to do much of my reading during work hours. I tend to do much of my work, well, I guess I look for any reason not to work.

by Jon on Oct 28, 2008 10:32 pm • link • report

It's up to you, David, but I would make a balance throughout the day by posting a major article in the morning and links in the afternoon or vice versa.

by Michael P on Oct 28, 2008 10:58 pm • link • report

i say just post whenever you feel like it

by DG-rad on Oct 28, 2008 11:50 pm • link • report

Er, um... I don't exactly know what I wrote last night, but what I intended to write was a joke about how I look for reasons not to do work while I'm at work, and my RSS feeds (GGW and others) provide some help.

by Jon on Oct 29, 2008 7:58 am • link • report

I prefer links whenever they are most fresh. Stale links = fail.

by Chris S on Oct 29, 2008 8:04 am • link • report

I only read mid-morning or early afternoon, so semantics of "morning" and "evening" don't really matter to me. Maybe you can start an in-house meme for the name of daily links post a la Slashdot's "from the [this post's snarky theme] department."

I like grouping of the links in one post though (a diet summary with maybe a sentence of fat-free commentary). Sites that constantly have tons of super short entries in their main RSS feed get hard to follow. Also, one person's fresh links are another's already-seen links, especially if you aggregate a lot of metro blogs.

by James M on Oct 30, 2008 3:02 pm • link • report