I Swear Twitter Is Going Berserk Today Just To Show Off Its Pretty New Graphics

Twitter is going completely nuts right now. Avatars are disappearing, backgrounds are disappearing, 503 errors are popping up, and yes, I’ve even see a Fail Whale. I’m not entirely sure why this is, and people at Twitter don’t seem too sure either, but I have a theory that it’s to show off a bunch of pretty new graphics they’ve been working on.

The new Fail Whale in the clouds:

Screen shot 2009-09-17 at 4.25.54 PM

The new color birdie default avatars:

Screen shot 2009-09-17 at 4.43.28 PM

The new suspended account birdie:

3929575663_f5f5da897a_o

I bet the official line will be that Twitter’s been tweaking things (say that ten times fast) quite a bit recently, so these anomalies are probably tied to that. But whatever, I think they just wanted to show off their cool new fail designs.

Update: Here are a few updates from Twitter. The API team says:

We are witnessing elevated error rates on OAuth requests. There is a disturbance in the force. We are looking into it.

Meanwhile Twitter support member notes:

Twitter is currently experiencing issues with backgrounds and avatars disappearing. Don’t worry, they will be back shortly.

[suspended photo via flickr/laughingsquid]