My daily routine is much different than it used to be — before Twitter.  Sixteen years ago, when I embarked on this digital journey, I woke up, threw off the covers, ran to the computer, opened my AOL email account and looked longingly at my incoming mailbox hoping for news from virtual friends.

Now I roll over, check the clock, pick up my iPhone, tap the Twhirl icon and see who’s been saying what in the Twitterverse while I’ve been asleep.  Twitter has become my lifeline to instant communication.  It’s always on.  Well, it’s always on as long as it’s not suffering technical difficulties, which was once both the scourge and the cuteness of Twitter.

Long before I became hooked, when I was merely a Twitter registrant that often went days without firing up the app, the one thing I was aware of by way of both Tweets and various blog posts was the down time of the burgeoning social media tool.  Seeing the multitude of complaints helped to keep me from becoming too involved.  Sure there were people I wanted to keep up to date with, but did I really want to know that they were looking for a new coffee shop and what if when I went back to see if they’d found the perfect replacement for their soon to be shuttered Starbucks I was met with the all-too-familiar Fail Whale, Twitter’s outage icon?

It’s reported that the Whale is known for it’s Canary-like twitter.  Awww, how clever, until you can’t send those all important 140 characters that have been knocking around in your brain for hours, being edited and tweaked for just the right message to go out to your loyal minions.

What if that Twitter friend has found the most perfect shop for coffee that carries a rare Guatemalan bean that has yet to be discovered by the masses and I want to check and see if there’s one by me and when I navigate my way into Twitter I am met by that cute, adorable Fail Whale being carted off by little canaries?

Things could be worse.  Or they could be far better.  For those of you that aren’t drawn to Twitter just yet, I would like to predict the future.  A future in which Twitter has achieved a five 9’s uptime.  Where we speak with friends, family, celebrity in short thoughts … just 140 characters or less, but without using abbreviated SMS language.   A future in which news is delivered in real time to our hand held devices or other computers with pictures and video and commentary in a Q&A format.  A future in which customer service can be managed from anywhere in the world, including the good old USofA because overhead will be minimal in terms of technology infrastructure.  A service any company can offer with employees telecommuting from their home, or on the road from their phone.

A future … but wait, the future is now.  This is all happening today and if you’re not here, if you’re not present, you’re not in it.  So take a few minutes, navigate over to Twitter.com and register an account.  Look, if I can’t convince you, perhaps Guy Kawasaki can or maybe Robert Scobel or Gary Vaynerchuk, CNN, Comcast, WholeFoods or … well, you get it.

And with the advent of automated Twitter events, some of which are just plain annoying, I can see the potential for good to come from automated Tweets.  For example, you are getting ready to head to the airport, your phone is nearby and you hear the alert.  When you pick it up and look at your Twitter app, you see that there is a major traffic jam on 95 and you’d better get in the car and off to the airport sooner rather than later so that you don’t miss your flight.  If radios can communicate traffic tie-ups to police and news outlets, surely it can be done for Twitter.

The list of ideas and Twitter users is enormous and growing exponentially every month and if nothing else, in 140 characters or less, It’s the trendy, challenging and fun new way to waste time and it can be done on the cheep.

Speculation ran high as news of an online suicide on Justin.tv (JTV) flew through the Web community on November 20th.  While reports of life-threatening accidents and serious illness have been part of the stories heard around the network during the 18 months the live streaming video service has been in operation, they have, with little exception, been false reports.

As news of the suicide began circulating among broadcasters and community members, the most often asked question was;  “What do you make of this suicide?”  Most tenured community members have been jaded by fictitious reports of death usually made up by the chatter that was reportedly deceased.  In the past, stories have been met with an outpouring of sympathy and compassion, in a virtual manner.  People have put up banners or icons, have penned songs or created videos in remembrance of the “deceased” before realizing it was all a hoax, so it was no surprise that there was speculation when news of the Bigg’s case began circulating.

As the story of 19 year old Abraham K Biggs of Broward County, Florida ending his life while broadcasting on Justin.tv percolated among the channels and chatrooms of JTV, accounts of viewers of the Bigg’s channel egging him on to push him to go through with his threats caused an outpouring of disbelief and disdain for those alleged to have participated in the behavior.

While this type of news presents the seedy side of Justin.tv, there have been opportunities for Justin and his team to mark historical events and activities via live streaming video that have gone untapped.

Take, for instance, the potential for people to witness Olympic events in real time rather than waiting for the recorded video to air in prime time in the US, hours after the events have concluded, the medals awarded and the news announced via internet news sites, thus taking the wind out of the sails along with the excitement.

What would election day have been like if there had been JTV broadcasters streaming live from polling places across the country, giving those yet to vote a look into what to expect in terms of wait times and weather from people right in their own community?   And if people had questions, they could have set up a kind of Q&A team at the larger polling places to help make the stress of getting out to vote less worrisome.

How great would it be for millions, possibly billions of people unable to make it to Washington, DC in January for Barak Obama’s inauguration to be able to witness it virtually, from a “regular citizen’s” point of view in addition to network and cable broadcasting; a kind of “man in the street” inauguration witnessing of events?

While sadness resonates among the Justin.tv community at the loss of life among community, there is the potential to turn this horrible outcome into help for others.  Kan and his team can find some good from this sad event by reaching out to suicide prevention organizations and asking for help in putting together a program on Justin.tv to help reach out to those struggling with depression so severe that they would consider an end such as this.  With an unlimited number of channels and available real estate to post advertisements, perhaps a percentage of ad space could be dedicated to promoting help for people facing the challenges and distress that depression brings into the lives of individuals and families.

I’d wager a bet that there are countless organizations that would welcome this kind of platform to get their message out and to give them a wider audience to offer help.

Fran Feldman hosts a nightly cooking show on justin.tv and blogs at http://justopia.com/blog.

See Also: Mashable.com