If you want a quick update on the result in your electorate, tweet @abcelections and one of our Vote Robots will get back to you.

To get results, send a tweet to @abcelections in a format like: "What's the result in South Perth?" or "What's happening in Eden-Monaro?"

This is an experiment we tried in 2010 but had to abandon because we couldn't get it working in time.

In the end, one of our producers at ABC News Online spent the night personally responding to hundreds of requests for election results.

We've done the same thing every state election since.

It ties into our philosophy that best practice on Twitter is to engage with people and give them useful, timely content - even if it's delivered by a robot.

We can't guarantee this will work for everyone. There's a chance it will flop and no-one will want to use it. There's also the possibility that if it's too popular, it will fall over on the night.

But innovation is an important part of what we do and is one of the four ABC values.

A big thank you to Twitter Australia for its help, ABC News developer Simon Elvery, senior producer Matt Liddy - who was part of the 2010 push and the current VoteBot project, and designer Tim Madden, who gave the bot its face.

The ABC will also offer comprehensive live election results on its Australia Votes site, including mobile optimised seat-by-seat results.