Knowledge Base: Missing Profile Images

There has been a recurrence of an old bug on Twitter's end (http://atebits.posterous.com/twitter-profile-images).

Profile images aren't being resized to thumbnails when uploaded to Twitter, so when Tweetie requests them, it gets a full sized version instead. This can be very bad, especially for mobile clients where memory is constrained.

To avoid running out of memory, Tweetie currently rejects any images that are bigger than 200px by 200px. Twitter knows about the problem: http://code.google.com/p/twitter-api/issues/detail?id=1158 - hopefully it will be fixed soon.

As a temporary workaround, you can upload a profile picture that is smaller than 200px and wait for the new image URL to clear Twitter's caches.

Update: Twitter is working on it - http://groups.google.com/group/twitter-development-talk/browse_thre...

Update: Twitter fixed this. The fix does not apply retroactively though, so if you had a busted avatar, it will still be busted. To fix it, simply upload a new one (no size limitations this time), and Twitter will properly rescale it. Then wait a day or so for it to clear the caches.