Come back, tweets :( (Photo: Twitter)

For the past 30 minutes or so, real-time updating on Twitter appears to have stalled. The most recent tweet appearing in the Twitter feed of a number of users is from over 30 minutes ago, and the site has stopped updating itself. A scant tweet from over a half hour ago will flow in at the rate of about one per minute--otherwise, it's a vast nothingness.

Strangely, it appears that tweets may be working on third party apps like Tweetdeck, but not on Twitter's dedicated site.

"This is killing me," one Twitter power user told Betabeat, his pain palpable through the Gchat window.

Twitter's delay comes on the heels of the news that the head of the CIA has left his position due to an extramarital affair, so we are all really missing the chance for some great zingers right now.

"Worst possible timing," said Abraham Riesman, a freelancer for Vice. "Petraeus steps down and I can't even get any decent misinformation."

Mysteriously absent from this Twitter snafu is the Fail Whale, Twitter's anti-mascot who appears every time the website is down. The company has spent the better half of this week patting itself on the back for withstanding the election night tweet load and touting its Ruby-to-Java transformation for the fix. But just because you don't see our old friend the Fail Whale, doesn't mean the site ain't broken.

We've reached out to Twitter to confirm the issue and will update when we hear back.

Update 4:17pm

It appears to be back. Twitter status blog clarifies a bit on the issue: "Some users may be experiencing a delay with new tweets in their timelines. Our engineers are currently working on this issue."