Twitter experiences glitches as it refreshes interface

Twitter has refreshed the look of its website again, although the move coincided with technical difficulties that meant the site had to temporary switch to an old version.

Late on Tuesday night, the Twitter team said in a post on the microblogging service that it was "going retro" by temporarily reverting back to the old Twitter interface that was used before the 2010 redesign. "Our engineers are working on re-enabling it and will update you shortly," the post read, just a few hours after the 2011 interface rollout began.

The post was updated in the early hours of Wednesday morning, stating: "We've turned #NewTwitter back on!"

At the time of writing, the site's Trends feature was also disabled. The brand-new Twitter interface is not yet visible to all users as it is being gradually rolled out, but Mashable has a screenshot. The new version has a sleeker, more metallic look than its predecessor.

It is not clear why Twitter had to revert to its "retro" interface, or why trends remain disabled. The site is known to have recently had datacentre difficulties, with a new, bespoke facility in Utah suffering power-related problems and other issues.