This isn't a very big deal, but you're not following your own API (http://apiwiki.twitter.com/REST+API+Documentation#HTTPStatusCodes) and are currently returning an HTTP 200 instead of a 503 as one would expect.
sunil-macbook:~ sunil$ curl -i -u sunilgarg -d status="trying to call the twitter api while twitter is down" http://twitter.com/statuses/update.xml Enter host password for user 'sunilgarg': HTTP/1.1 200 OK Date: Tue, 07 Oct 2008 05:16:52 GMT Server: Apache Last-Modified: Tue, 07 Oct 2008 05:08:08 GMT Accept-Ranges: bytes Content-Length: 170 Cache-Control: max-age=1800 Expires: Tue, 07 Oct 2008 05:46:52 GMT Vary: Accept-Encoding Connection: close Content-Type: application/xml; charset=utf-8 <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?> <error reason="maintenance" deadline="about an hour"> Twitter is down for maintenance. It will return in about an hour. </error>
