<status>
...
<entities>
<user_mentions>
<user_mention start="4" end="9">
<id>8285392</id>
<screen_name>raffi</screen_name>
</user_mention>
<user_mention start="16" end="23">
<id>3191321</id>
<screen_name>noradio</screen_name>
</user_mention>
</user_mentions>
<urls>
<url start="38" end="64">
</url>
</urls>
<hashtags>
<hashtag start="66" end="69">
<text>#hot</text>
</hashtag>
</hashtags>
</entities>
...
</status>
as shown above, we'll be parsing out all mentioned users, all lists, all included URLs, and all hashtags. in the case of users, we'll provide you their user ID, and for hashtags we'll provide you the query you can run against the search API. and, for all of them, we'll also tell you at what character count the entity starts and stops -- that should really take the burden off you guys to parse the text properly.
this entities block will probably be extended later, and these entities are just the start. have we missed anything? is there anything else you would like to see? as always - just drop us a note, and look for these entities to start slowly rolling out.