Addressing "repeated time values within panel" error with Twitter/observational data

[Paolo Maldini]

I have Twitter observational data that I want to convert to panel data for empirical analysis purposes.
Below is a data example of the main variables, where the id variable refers to each unique user in the dataset

I ran the following code to declare the data as panel:
```
xtset ID date
```
But I keep receiving the error "repeated time values within panel", but I believe this is not a concern given the nature of how people use Twitter (i.e. some individuals may post several times per while others only post once a month. Therefore, I want to combine observations written in the same day by the same ID/poster, but not sure how to conduct that.

```
dataex ID poster time

----------------------- copy starting from the next line -----------------------
[CODE]
* Example generated by -dataex-. For more info, type help dataex
clear
input float ID str36 poster int time

6 "(crash42 )" 19013
6 "(crash42)" 19150
6 "(crash42 )" 19153
6 "(crash42)" 19166
6 "(crash42 )" 19166
7 "(maga82" 18975
7 "(maga82)" 18977
7 "(maga82)" 18977
7 "(maga82)" 19000
7 "(maga82)" 19000
8"(costanza)" 19008
8 "(costanza)" 19008
```

[Carlo Lazzaro]

Paolo:
if you do not plan to use time-series related commands, such as lags and leads, you can safely -xtset-your dataset with -panlvar- only.

[Paolo Maldini]

I am not, so thank you so much!
It should not be problematic that I received this outcome (i.e. an unbalanced dataset), correct?
```
xtset ID
```
output:
```
Panel variable: id (unbalanced)
```

[Nick Cox]

Essentially the same question was cross-posted and answered at https://stackoverflow.com/questions/...s-within-panel

[Carlo Lazzaro]

I am not, so thank you so much!
It should not be problematic that I received this outcome (i.e. an unbalanced dataset), correct?
```
xtset ID
```
output:
```
Panel variable: id (unbalanced)
```

Paolo:
panels are frequently unbalanced, but Stata does not care .

[Paolo Maldini]

Paolo:
panels are frequently unbalanced, but Stata does not care .

Thanks for the useful support!