Scott on Writing

Some More Interesting (To Me) Comment Statistics

After posting yesterday's analysis of comments on my blog, I decided to run a few more statistics.  My previous entry examined if there was a correlation between when a blog was posted (either day of the week or hour of the day) and how many comments it received.  As the stats showed, there was virtually no correlation between what hour of the day the blog entry was posted and the number of comments, but there was a slight correlation between the day of the week the entry was posted - specifically, entries made on Monday, Tuesday, or Wednesday had a much higher probability of generating more comments than those posted on Thursday, Friday, Saturday, or Sunday.  (Andy Smith mused that perhaps I had more interesting things to say on Monday as opposed to Friday; my assumption is that I am equally as likely to say interesting things on any given day of the week.)

Anywho, I decided to examine when, on average, my readers made their comments, both in terms of time of day and day of week.  The results aren't too surprising.  For the day of the week, people were more likely to post during the week, especially during the middle of the weed (Tuesday, Wednesday, or Thursday):

As for the hour of the day, the most probable posting time was between 8:00 AM and 12:00 PM PST (GMT -8).  This correlates to the working hours during most of the US, especially near the lunch hours in all four mainland US time zones.  There was also an increase in posting later at night, 9:00 PM and 10:00 PM.  I wonder if this was people posting at home, or people in Western Europe posting at their lunch break.

These stats - the distribution of when comments are made, and when comments are made relative to the date/time the blog entry was made - are not on my blog homepage, ScottOnWriting.NET.  They are output cached for 15 minutes or so, but if you are interested you can always get a quick glance at when comments are made here on my blog.

The last statistic I was interested in computing was the delta between when a blog entry was made and when a comment was made.  That is, does the average person who leaves a comment make the comment in an hour after the entry has been made?  12 hours?  24 hours?  48?  I ran the following query to determine this average delta:

select avg(ParentDateAdded)
from
  (select dateadded,
         (select datediff(hh, c.dateadded, b.dateadded)
          from blog_content c
          where c.id = b.parentid) as ParentDateAdded
   from blog_content b
   where b.blogid=0 and b.posttype=3) as blah

The results?  The average time between when a blog entry was made and when a comment was left was 253 hours, or ten and a half days.  This number is skewed, though, by the fact that there are a handful of comments that are made to a blog entry several months after the entry was made.  If we look at the median delta, it is a more reasonable 33 hours.

With all of this information at our disposal, it's not surprising that Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday are the days of the week whose blog entries generate the most comments.  After all, the average commenter leaves his or her comment a day and a half after the blog entry is made, and most people leave comments on Tuesday, Wednesday, or Thursday, so it follows, naturally, that the best time to make a blog entry would be on Monday, Tuesday, or Wednesday.

So, let me leave you with this observation.  Assuming your blog's comments follow the same commenting distribution that mine does, if you enjoy comment discussions on your blog and have something interesting to blog about, make sure you save it til Monday, Tuesday, or Wednesday for maximum comments.

posted on Sunday, March 28, 2004 11:03 AM