Twitter's custom backgrounds are gone. Are ads coming to replace them?

Anyone who has logged onto Twitter in the past few hours has likely encountered the "blindingly white wallpaper" that the site has used to replace its formerly-customizable backgrounds.

While many users are baffled — it appears you can change the background back to a custom color or photo, but after clicking around the website it vanishes again — the reason for the change could be as simple as $$$.

That's right — ads might be coming.

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The official statement from Twitter is this: "We're removing background images from the home and notifications timelines on web for all users," a spokesperson told Techcrunch. "Now, background images are only available where logged-in users will see them publicly (Tweet pages, list pages, and collections pages)."

However, TechCrunch's Drew Olanoff speculates that the coming changes could be much more of an eyesore.

"One of the possibilities, and something I've heard, is that Twitter wants more control of their ad display experience," Olanoff wrote. "For example, if the company were to want to sell a full-homepage-takeover-background-ad that you see on a lot of sites, they couldn't."

Mr. Burns (or his voice, anyway) agrees: Bring back the custom backgrounds, Twitter! Jeva Lange