It’s no secret that I’m a huge fan of Twitter. In fact, I’m notorious for it. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, Twitter is my “life online”. But it’s not just interesting for the way in which I can update friends on what I’m thinking or doing. It also represents an exciting shift in the way the web is acting.

Ever since its rise to popularity, the Web has been hailed as the fastest and most up to date way of accessing news and information. But in it’s so-called 1.x state, it remained largely a daylight system, at least for the mainstream.

Geekery continues at all hours of course, and if one has an interest in things taking place on the other side of the world, you can often find new stuff at any given hour.

But these are relatively limited, altogether niche applications of the Web’s ability to update at any given moment. They are constrained by that human phenomenon, “Office Hours”. Web 1.x was characterised by a revision of the same Publisher mentality that reigned in Print Media, later augmented by the rolling update mentality of Television.

But with the advent of Web 2.0, those mentalities are no longer relevant. News sites and so on continue to function in this manner, by necessity, but User generated Content is unaffected by Office Hours. And cares naught about time of day.

Web 2.0 has spawned the true 24-Hour Web. Users are constantly providing a live or near live stream of information and content, updating sites like Wikipedia instantly with breaking news. Twitter tracks reactions to events in real-time.

Qik, a leader in mobile web streaming, and similar desktop-oriented sites have given us a platform for providing video coverage of just about anything, far faster than any TV or WebTV crew could arrive on the scene. This change, as it stands, is nascent.

There has yet to be a major event that can demonstrate the power of the User-Controlled 24-Hour Web, but it’s already showing signs that it is coming. Real-time reactions to Elections, international sporting and media events and so on have already become the norm. I, for one, would feel lost without a Twitter to post my thoughts on breaking events.

The time is coming and coming soon when you’ll be able to ignore conventional reporting and just get your news from the 24 Hour Web.

I don’t know about you, but I think that’s awesome. And it should prompt innovation in conventional broadcasters/publishers, as they need to find a way to catch up.