The reporting of a message's timestamp really depends on the system you are working on. And the key aspect is to genuinely think how the users think about that

The reporting of a message's timestamp really depends on the system you are working on. And the key aspect is to genuinely think how the users think about that timestamp. I recently implemented it in a real time system where I write things like "just now" (within the last 10 seconds) "more than 10 seconds ago" (between 10 seconds and less than a minute) "more than a minute ago" (between 1 one minute and less than 10 minutes) "more than 10 minutes ago" (between 10 minutes and less than 1 hour) ... (I think you get the gist) After it say more than a day... then that's it the message is considered very old