Yes, that problem would lead me to think there is a problem with the Twitter service instead of your request. I'm not familiar with that error yet, but will look into it. Related results, and a number of the other new APIs, are still relatively unstable. They will be unavailable at times, and are not necessarily prepared for widespread use yet. Early adopters will have to tolerate a certain amount of mystery from them.The Twitter API results a whole series of 400 and 500 errors randomly and at a low level. Usually the exact error code is meaningless, since it varies. From my experience a false error happens about 0.1% of the time when you make a request. The only solution is to repeat the request.