Over the past few days the number of Twitter statuses popping up from those I follow on Twitter have been scarce.  At first I thought it was because I was beta testing the latest version of Hahlo.  Then, I thought it was a problem with the API and so Twitterrific would also have the issue.  But, I’ve finally taken a moment to look into the problem and I am, indeed, missing the majority of status updates on Twitter.

Recently on Twitter

The image here (pictured) is what I see on my Twitter profile page. You are looking at roughly 12 hours of Twitter activity from, what should be, 43 people on Twitter. However, you’re only seeing activity from four people. This should mean that these four people are the only people that have updated Twitter in the last 12 hours.

But its way off. Turns out nearly every person I follow has updated their Twitter status within the last 12 hours. If you poke around their profile pages, you’ll see that’s true.

The reason I’m writing about this, is because I have yet to see anything on the Twitter blog about this, and I’m certain that I can’t be the only one affected by this. I’ll try my best to make sure that the team at Twitter sees this blog post.

Are you experiencing the same thing?

Update 11:43am EST: I submitted a support request to Twitter in hopes of making them aware of the issue.

Update 8:45am EST on April 21: Still no response from Twitter on their blog. I’m really not sure why they’ve chosen to go silent about this issue, but it is the direct opposite of a good example. Dave Winer is also very surprised at the silence. Ev, Biz, Alex, dudes?

Update: 12:57pm EST on April 21: Twitter has now posted an update to their blog about the issues. Thanks team Twitter for keeping us up-to-date.

Update: 1:05pm EST on April 21:

How to fix your Twitter cache

It is really simple. Follow someone you are not already following. And then un-follow them. Refresh your Twitter page and you’re all set. Your cache has now been restored.

Note: As several people have pointed out, and as I have now discovered myself, this fix only works for “past tweets” that you missed. It does not allow new ones to come through.

Update: 3:25pm EST on April 21: So this post has been linked to from Techmeme, my comment on the Twitter blog, Mashable, and elsewhere. Thanks for all of the links.

Update: 4:15pm EST on April 21: This post has been dugg. Digg it up, if you’d like.