I’ve been remiss in posting to the editor’s blog here (due to, for some unknown reason, a tsunami of mainline technology news on our sites). So in the usual “I have a blog but haven’t maintained it in months” post, sorry.

I know we’ve all moved to a 24/7, always on, always connected world, but the newest thing I’ve been running into over the last few months is people sending me startup pitches at inane hours.

It used to be, most folks send you email during standard business hours, Monday through Friday, 8am to 5pm. You just didn’t get emails on weekends or really late in the evening. That’s not the case now. I get emails pitching startups:

• At 2am on a weekday
• Early Sunday morning at 4am
• On Christmas and/or other national/religious holiday
• Any other time of the day

I know, startups are hard at work even at 3am on a Saturday, and no one observes the Sabbath anymore (what is religion, anyway in the world of tech startups?). But really, even if you ARE at a startup where you work 7 days a week and 20 hours a day: you’ve got to time your pitches, because even folks in the go-go, always on startup world aren’t on 24/7.

The infographic recently posted by ReadWriteWeb is equally applicable to pitching editors, too: there are good, and bad times for pitching yourself to a publication like ours. It’s particularly important if you’re pitching editors who are getting (literally) hundreds of startups every week.  As I told someone (after accidentally finding their 11pm Friday night email three weeks later): sorry, your email got buried.

Particularly bad times for me (and perhaps other media):

- During a big technology conference (too busy talking with startups in the hallways, at sessions, etc.)

- On the weekend (not everyone, but I generally stay away from information overload and email on weekends)

- In the wee hours of the morning (yes, we sleep too, sometimes).

- During holidays (spend Christmas with the family, not email, thank you).

- Late evenings (usually spent networking at industry events and/or driving from industry events, or with family).

Anyway, hopefully this might help some of those startups who haven’t quite figured this one out.

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Random by Benjamin Kuo