Guess where my newsbreaks are coming from ...

... if you guessed Twitter, you're brilliant!

In the past 12 hours, Twitter has brought me this news first:

• local fire at a plastic factory (I wondered what that strange smell was ...)


• Australian Rules Football player leaving MY team and moving on to another state (sob sob)


• death of Patrick Swayze (RIP. And that surname is really hard to type).

Hours later, these stories were broadcast by TV stations and discussed on other social media forums like Facebook.

That's part of my respect for Twitter. I bump into many people who still poo-poo it. But hey, 140 characters is all you need to let me know there's a fire in my neighbourhood, or that a former heart throb is no longer with us ...