About the actual technical root of the issue - does anyone else find it surprising that twitter is actually using integers for each status update added to it's database and incrementing as it goes? It seems to be this is particularly bad form for a number of reasons: not only does it lend itself to overflow issues such as this - it allows competitors to easily gauge twitter's usage.

I would of had a generated pseudo random sequence values from the start - it's not like having a simple integer buys you anything in this case.