The Old Fail Whale Was So Much Cuter

screen-shot-2009-08-24-at-12952-pm

503 error? Are we serious, Twitter? Yes, the service with an illustrious history of going down, is down again. But rather than returning the cute, cuddly Fail Whale that we’ve all come to know and love, everyone is getting a boring old 503 error.

For those not versed in server speak, 503 means:

The Web server (running the Web site) is currently unable to handle the HTTP request due to a temporary overloading or maintenance of the server. The implication is that this is a temporary condition which will be alleviated after some delay. Some servers in this state may also simply refuse the socket connection, in which case a different error may be generated because the socket creation timed out.

Could we at least get re-routed to another server with a 503 Whale?

As always, here’s our list of suggestions on what to do when Twitter is down.

whale

Update: Here’s an update from Twitter with absolutely no information besides the obvious (we’re down).

Update 2: And we’re back. No word on what the issue was yet.