Does Twitter's streaming API (stream.twitter.com/1/statuses/sample.json) give the most recent tweets? For example, current new york time is 9.20 AM, one of the tweets I got through this method had the created_date as Wed Oct 06 13:13:42 +0000 2010. Does this mean the tweets returned by this API could be a few hours old? Or does it return the latest tweets (as in few minutes or seconds old)?
A:
The streaming API returns a sample of tweets - for non privileged users, it's only 5% of the stream. You can request access to the Firehose, which is all tweets, but you must have a good reason to do so. I think you can buy access too.
When dealing with user streams, this doc indicates that you should be getting the data in near realtime, so I don't think you should see such a big delay.
EDIT: See this. 13:13:42 +0000 2010 is actually 9:13:42 EST. I just checked, I'm on EST, 10:27 AM, and the time is 14:27 GMT +000. Your results are very close to actual time within minutes, not hours.
SB
2010-10-06 13:38:20
It says near realtime, but looks like the tweets are a few hours old.
2010-10-06 13:47:44
right, I should've checked it first. Thanks
2010-10-06 15:11:13