What's up with Twitter?

Ok, Twitter's getting on my nerves.

Tried to get on it again this morning and got the old Fail Whale for what seems like the third time in as many days, announcing that Twitter is over capacity.

Apparently the problems could continue today, since Twitter's status update site issued the following message this morning: "We're seeing periodic high rates of errors on Twitter.com. This is the result of testing and maintenance. We expect our maintenance to end at approximately 7:30" a.m.

When I tried to log on about 9:20, though, I got greeted by the Fail Whale, so apparently the problems aren't going to end when maintenance does. I know the site's been struggling with all the World Cup soccer traffic and its own internal architectural problems, but part of what makes people like Twitter is the ease of communication -- have a thought, blast it out there. Simple.

If it's not going to be that easy, or if these high error rates become a more regular part of the Twitter experience, the site that helped revolutionize digital communications could find itself an afterthought.

Twitter users out there, are you having the same frustrations?