I was poking around in the pre-release of Twitter for BlackBerry smartphones and I noticed this error message when trying to update the @ Mentions screen.

The Twitter server is down or being upgraded. Please try again later.

I have two hopes…  First, that the Twitter server is being upgraded.  Second, that RIM has more than one Twitter server.

I have no idea if the server was down or being upgraded, however, I can say that since the error message has ceased accessing the @ Mentions screen has gone from unusably slow (regularly 90 seconds or more) to just painstakingly slow (usually 30 to 60 seconds ).  Every now and then @ Mentions updates before the backlight goes  off.  This, however, is usually not the case.