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answers:

1

Everyone knows, if you want to thread emails you use Jamie Zawinski's alogirhtm. But it's a new century, and there's a new messaging service.

What's the best algorithm for threading status updates posted on twitter?

Things I'd definitely like it to cope with:

  • Understanding in_reply_to_status_id
  • Understanding in_reply_to_user_id, and using some time or content based heuristics to work out which message it is in reply to.
  • Working with a set of tweets given to it, or all tweets on twitter.

But perhaps you can think of more.

A: 

On Twitter, people often write "RT" in front of the message they are replying to.

An RT is not a reply, it's a "retweet." It just means you're repeating what someone else said, followed by an attribution.
Bill the Lizard
In my experience, it is used for both. People often use the format "<reply> RT <@name> <quote message as far as space allows>" for their replies.