You're probably here because you are unable to upload your profile or background picture to Twitter which is understandably frustrating. However, this could be a problem with amazonas or the depository where Twitter stores its pictures.
Maybe Twitter is doing some coding that's interefering with picture upload. So far, no answers but a lot of people are getting frustrated. I assume Twitter is looking into the issue and trying to find out what's going on.
Twitter users are posting their Twitter picture upload concerns here:
Pictureless Folks
I have been using Twitter for a few months now and I only experienced this problem as of last night, May 31, 2009. If you experienced this problem before and if you were able to work around it and find a solution please let us know by posting a comment here.
Some recent users comments about the picture issue that's going on...
As I type this it's been 11 hours since the last input from anyone representing Twitter. I only recently created a Twitter account and was going to blast 75,000 of my mail subscribers over the next week to let them know about it, but now I'm not going to. Not to mention the over-100,000 people visiting my sites in the next month. They don't need to be blasted to, either. I figure this would have been another 5,000-10,000 interested new users to Twitter, but that's not going to happen now. The reason? The background image is the only way to define a style/look which gives people a first impression and possibly initial anticipation to join/follow. If all I can send them to is a plain ugly page or only limited choice of 1 few fruity pastel choices, then I won't send them there at all.
I heard recently that Twitter's retention rate is abysmal compared to other social media type services. This is an example of why. Companies have issues all the time, but this shows that even though Twitter has captured a big audience and getting a lot of press and interested people, it's not ready for the big leagues. The plain & simple fact is, they are not communicating to the members.
I bet it's something stupid like they aren't up-to-date on their Amazon S3 billing. Kind of hard to do when you have no revenue source except investment capital. Amazon should just buy them and use the service as a means to showcase their cloud computing infrastructure to find companies who'll be able to stay as customers long-term AND stay as customers long term. Amazon found a way to do it with Alexa. Twitter seems like an easy target for them, plus it would allow Amazon to enter the social media market, which they could use to boost retail sales.
Is Twitter ignoring the problem? No. Here's Twitter's update as of Jun 1st, 2009:
Trouble updating profile settings 6 hours ago
Many users are currently unable to update their profile images, background images, and device settings; and new users in particular may have trouble logging in. We are working on these problems presently and will update this status with our progress.
I am sure there are technical issues that can affect others users and fixing it is probably not as easy as changing a line of code.
Update: Twitter pic upload seems to have been fixed as of JUN 2, 2009. Considering that the service is "free" , it's prudent to cut Twitter some slack?
