Twitter background and profile image problem!

I am having problems with the background image on twitter.co/magdaZINE
Problem is twofold:
1. Image not viewable on webpage but I can see it in the source being fed from amazon3 server farm
2. I want to change this image but even though it days Customization saved" the new mages are not visible nor do they change in the source code.

Same here. First the background vanished. Cleared cache. Reloaded. Nothing. Then it reappeared but .jpg or .png with simple file names don't work. It says that the picture was uploaded fine but it never shows up - the profile picture. I've even tried different pictures. Same problem.

Similar to other users. Changed background image. Twitter confirmed upload successful. Yet now both my prior image and newly uploaded one are nowhere to be found.

Confirmed image size is small enough, cleared cache, etc. No dice.

Even tried to upload my original image again, but nothing.

Thanks, folks, for the details.

Same issue here. Needed to update my background. But, even though Twitter confirmed the change was successful, neither my previous nor my new background appear, I'm left with no background, not even the default Twitter one. Twitter account: jayvalens

See: http://help.twitter.com/forums/31935/...

Over 8,000 other people having the SAME issue. Seems this has been an open issue for nearly 2 months. How hard is this? It should be an easy fix. Like, retardedly easy to fix. Yet... 2 months? Hello?

this has been upsetting me alllllll day.actually for the past week.plz help.

Background image is proving to be a problem. First image worked, but I needed to change it due to being a little too big. Attempted change, both backgrounds are now gone. Wont accept new background, says "nice picture", but not picture is viewed.

Have noticed this problem being around for awhile,
just thought I'd throw in my frustration as well.

-Kyle (@kyl_e)

Same issue as everyone who has flooded the Twitter Knowledge base on Picture issues. Tried different sizes, & jpg\gif\png and still won't show my pic. Told me as well "That's a nice pic". So condescending.

I tried the 3.0.10 Mozilla Firefox and Opera, but didn't change my background. I tried pictures with 103kb and 166kb and smaller too, but despite the message that the settings were saved, nothing has changed and lost my picture.

Unfortunately many people have reported having the same problem, but not solved it. For me, this sounds like a great lack of respect, love the site, but I'm VERY disappointed =/

the same here! i tried to change my picture and when i uploaded the new one nothing appeared; although twitter said the upload was successful! Same issue w/ background image! some help please!

I've been having the issue since I attempted to change my profile photo on Saturday ... it turned to a broken image .. it kept saying "Hey, nice picture" but it was broken ... so I deleted it and got the brown box avatar back .. then it wouldn't delete the brown box ... now I'm back to a broken image today ... very frustrating indeed .. @miniatus

@picassimal I can upload my profile image without any problem but have tried to upload my background image and it will not take. I do not receive any error messages and it confirms saved changes but it still does not view. I am on Firefox 3.0.10 running on a Mac Dual 2 GHz PowerPC G5 on OSX Version 10.4.11. The file I am trying to upload is a 572 KB png.

There are a LOT more people having this problem than this page might lead one to believe. Check out http://help.twitter.com/forums/31935/... to see the hundreds of posts from people with this exact same issue. And from that forum it's clear this has been an issue for MONTHS. Which is surprising to me. Is it really that hard to clear up?

@Holly I found tons of people just by doing a twitter search for recent comments... it's definitely pretty wide spread...

@MartianLove I have the same issue along with 8000+ folks that are complaining on the Twitter Help site. I tried uploading a new picture yesterday. On my profile page it showed the old picture. On home page no picture. when I went to Settings to delete all pictures and upload again, it showed the old picture as the file saved. I deleted that. Uploaded the new picture and still nothing. I get a line beside my name on my profile page that if I click on will show the picture I uploaded, but image does not show up on Home page or any other place. And i can no longer delete the image...

having the same issue...I use twitter for marketing and business reasons so this is a HUGE deal for me. It is a fashion design company and image is everything. When will this be fixed?!

Blog about it?
http://nopicturedude.blogspot.com/
I think Twitter is looking into this. I give them some credit. Sometimes it's not easy to find the culprit that's causing pic upload problems.

Yes, I use twitter for marketing my businesses as well and am exhibiting art this Friday and want to make the announcement but I will not un-protect my page until I have a proper background image uploaded. Image is everything to me too.

Extremely frustrating. I have to say this site has been the only place where I have seen any input from Twitter employees, and based on how long this issue has been in existence, I'm not impressed.

I have been having similar issues as all above regarding uploading a custom bg-image. I have gone through all the support-steps, posted on the known issues forum, and submitted a request about 24 hours ago. Haven't seen any replies.

The known-issues forum for this issue(http://help.twitter.com/forums/31935/...) has over 8,000 comments since the issue was recognized April 2nd. Guys, that was 2 months ago! The last update came April 22nd (The update read: "Update: we should have a fix for this bug soon. Thanks for your patience!"). Umm... what is the definition of "soon"? A month? Two?

If you are working on it, that would be nice to know. I'm sure people could be a lot more patient if there were regular updates or at least some acknowledgement of the problem. Over 8,000 comments, and to me it just seems like the issue is being ignored. I'd say with as many people complaining about it as there are, this should be on the forefront of issues to be resolved if there's some sort of queue of work to be done. Get it fixed, please!

Same problem here. I uploaded it fine. Then I added two changes and uploaded a couple days later now nothing is there? did they fix this problem?

As I mentioned before, if this is beyond twitter's grasp they just shouldn't offer it as a feature. Why get people mad?

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.

There's a new status update on the Twitter Status blog, fwiw.

http://status.twitter.com/post/116659...

Profile images and background images are amongst the settings affected by whatever issue it is they're currently working on.

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.

Twitter is great, unfortunately they run their business circa pre-Dot-Com bubble burst (2000). It was my understanding that throwing loads of venture capital at projects with no business plan or very very thorough plan for generating revnue were a thing of the past...

What was that old cliche...There are suckers born every minute.

Agreed and seconded that background images are one of the few ways to stand out on Twitter.

Failure to fix this issue is why, unfortunately, when Google finally releases WAVE there will be a mass exodus from Twitter, resulting in yet another great idea being swallowed by Google.

Twitter please just do not lie down and go out without a fight. This issue has drove me crazy for a week now with the old background image always coming back. Please fix this problem.

Frankly I'm sick of Google being the savior of everything, too. They mess things up by way of a "our way or the highway" mentality, yet the masses love conforming and hand them gobs of power over the web. For example, Gmail. Has a lot of good things going for it but the "conversations"-only way of seeing messages with no other options is just plain horrid. It might be fine if conversations could be split or joined and if there was a choice between threaded or flat view, and that alone makes it not worth using. And AdSense, my god, can I please have a blacklist of sites which are made up primarily of AdSense garbage stuffed into every corner of their design? And now the ever-so-clever auto-finish search box feature so nicely adds endings like " cracks", " warez" and " torrents" to search suggestions, even if it's to the detriment of a business' commerce.

But anyway this is about Twitter, but this is also about the current "way of the web" of all things expected to be free. There's been talk of micro-payment services for a decade yet nothing ever happens. Micro-payment options would save the web's best services and ideas from collapsing in on themselves. I would happily pay 1 cent per Tweet if I knew that would be more than enough to support the service, make it reliable, and allow it to grow. Even for people who mass-tweet, it would be chump change compared to their cell phone bills. It would pay for capacity, hardware, employees and the ability to support growth and profits without the need for advertising or other forms of revenue. They could offer the first 100 tweets free per account, and there would be no worry of people jumping between accounts to dodge the "cost" since one of the main points is having followers and building up a following list. It would also curb spam.

POSSIBLE SOLUTION. This may only work for the background image issue, I don't want to test this on the profile pic/avatar. I saw a mention of this in one of the comments to the massive "known issues" topic related to this.

Temporarily set your profile to "Protect my updates", then set it back to normal. I was concerned to try this, fearing the account would get permanently set to "protected" given the other issues so far.

Lo & behold, the last background I tried updating to magically appeared. The only problem is the background seems to go back-and-forth between the last new background uploaded a few hours ago and the one that's been on there for a while. I'm trying to figure out what combination of actions will let me get a fresh one to "stick", but at least now I have SOME reasonable background until their techs fix this issue for real.

POSSIBLE FIX PART TWO: Thanks Jay. I also just discovered that if you try to upload your Newer background, then it disappears again, but if you once again protect your account and save, the newer background will appear.

The craziest way ever to upload a new background but it works.

C'mon twitter, just fix this and stop making us dance.

I just try to upload image and that usually came after the trick of "protect updates" was replaced by now that I've chosen (although it worked once).

I tried this trick a few other times and has "Twitter is over capacity" or simply the image has not changed. I am happy that now I have a background, but would like the problem was really resolved.

And Twitter is really crazy because I have to change an image and the image that appeared was another attempt o.O

I tried it really early this morning, my main problem has been uploading my display picture.... doing it at 6am gave me no issues at all .. now my solution is to not touch a thing.

Every time we update my background is one of several images that previously tried (all of yesterday). Now I choose the background that appears, sometimes not. The "protect updates" trick sometimes works, sometimes not.

For now let the background that survived the bug.

PS: someone noticed that the table of colors also disappeared?

I am having the same problem -- first it is there then it is not. Sometime it is there and I can see it -- but other users cannot see it. Now it is not there.

I think they've fixed it but I get a feeling that Twitter may be doing it on a per account basis. Twitter is usually pretty good at taking care of things. But, if they have to manually fix this, it could be a time consuming task.

I finally got a personal response with some suggestions and I tried the first one (clearing my browser cache) and it works now.

I also received a personal response with all sorts of general issues and fixes and links. I have tried clearing my browser cache multiple times and my background still does not work. It feels good getting some attention, The old file keeps coming back. I have tried the roundabout solution posted earlier by Jay, but unfortunately that has not worked for me either. It's a shame, I really like my background lol.

Hopefully this will get resolved soon. I think they are finally updating people, which makes me feel better, too.

yes it seems hit or miss. My solution that worked this morning apparently has reverted back to the old graphic for my background. *sigh* not sure if I even want to try anymore.

The issue hasn't really been resolved. The best I've been able to manage to do is revert back to one of the last 2 backgrounds (which seems random which one the system picks) using the "protect my profile" trick/hack but can't update the background to a NEW image.

Where is Rael Dornfest? He replied as an employee from Twitter to this topic 1.5 days ago... now silence.

Been a daily twitter user for a little while now and all of a sudden at login i am getting a 403 ERROR (twitter cannot "authenticate" me) @EFranz13 - HELP PLEASE!

TONS of people posting about getting the HTTP 304 ERROR message. Affecting LOGIN, backgrounds and friends - PLEASE HELP!

I am completely unable (and have been for two days now) to upload any background image or change my background image to a default one. I have e-mailed the Twitter rep listed, but I get questions and no acknowledgment that this is a broad, system-wide issue. But given the number of complaints, it must be, right?

Hi. There's a Known Issues page for people who have trouble updating their profile or background images.

Please see this page on Twitter's Help Desk:
http://twitter.zendesk.com/forums/319...

MDY: Comments on the page to which you refer, like comments here, on this serious problem have received no comment by Twitter. The problem still exists and Twitter could at least acknowledge that they are working on it, if they are. For many days now, I have been unable to update a background image (using either my own photo or Twitter's formats) to the background page. It is broken. And no progress is being made at all.

Hi Concerns. I don't know what else to tell you -- in your first reply above, you had asked for confirmation that this must be a "broad, system-wide issue".

My reply to you was in response to that statement -- to confirm your suspicion that - yes, it is an issue that is experienced by other users as well.

Fwiw, I'm inclined to believe that Twitter is aware the problem still exists and that they are working on it even if they have not posted updates.

I say that because I've seen other "known issues" pages eventually get marked as "Fixed" or "Closed" (like those listed here, for example). To me that means they do track the status of their known issues and do work to fix them, even if it feels to us like nothing is happening until an update is actually posted.

Thanks guys helped me too

Stefan's fix worked for me http://circa42.com/2009/10/twitter-ba...

Hope it works for you as well!

Uploading a background image on Twitter is hit or miss. Sometimes the image loads, sometimes it doesn't. Sometimes it switches to a default background. Sometimes it switches to a previously loaded image.

I've spent at least 40 minutes trying to change my background.

Last week someone else was tweeting about incredibly aggravating issue.

It's ridiculous that you can't fix a simple problem like this.

I'm going now to try Stefan's trick, above.

Insane.