Retweet Chains, and retweets of retweets

[manggit]

Hello All,

I am currently developing an app for a open source project. I would
like to first obtain all direct child retweets of a given tweet, and
then I would like to find all retweets of each of the child retweets,
so on and so forth, until i reach the end of the retweet chain.
However given the new style retweets, the api function call returns
all retweets of a given tweet, including retweets of retweets, as
retweets of the original tweet. Therefore I am unable to follow the
progression of a tweet and gather information on whether a retweet is
a retweet of the original tweet, or if the retweet is of a retweet.

Is there anyway to obtain this information using the status_retweet
api function call, or any clever combination of any of the api
functions?


Any support will be greatly appreciated

Thanks
Mang-Git

[Tom van der Woerdt]

No and yes.

No: if there's no specific API for it, then there's no easy way.
Yes: You can build a follower-tree (A follows B, B follows C, C follows
D, etc) from the original tweep, but that may take a lot of time
depending on the amount of retweets, and should probably only be used
for research purposes.

Tom

[manggit]

Hi Tom,

Thanks for the prompt reply, I just wanted to clarify, or maybe I have
completely misunderstood you, so are you suggesting that I first call
statuses_retweets on the original tweet, and then for each returned
tweet, get the user information and find the users followers? What if
a person is following multiple people who retweeted the orignal tweet?
For example, if person A tweets something, and the tweet is retweeted
by person B and C, finally person D retweets person B's retweet. How
would we determine if person D's retweet is a retweet of person B's
retweet, using just the statuses_followers api function call?

Thanks again
Mang-Git

[Tom van der Woerdt]

Hi,

I think that it is safe to assume that if user B follows C but not D, that he/she will retweet C and not D. However, this is not always 100% accurate. If an user follows both C and D, he/she will have retweeted the first one who retweeted it - the user does not get the second one in the timeline.

Tom

Sent from my iPod