What does +0000 mean in the context of the date returned by the twitter API?

Question

It:

"Tue Jan 12 21:33:28 +0000 2010"

was returned from the Twitter API. The rest are pretty obvious, but what does +0000 refer to? Is this some kind of time zone designation?

Answer 1

This indicates the time zone. This is the UTC time offset.

Answer 2

+0000is an offset HHMMfrom UTC / GMT, in which case the time when you return corresponds to UTC.

Please note that this does not exactly match the geographic time zone, as daylight saving time can change the offset. For example, Sweden +0100 in winter and +0200 in summer.