Twitter became unavailable for users across the world, after the site stopped working at about 7.30pm on Tuesday.

“Something is technically wrong”, a message read. “Thanks for noticing – we’re going to fix it up and have things back to normal soon.”

The message was accompanied by a picture of an unhappy robot with long flailing arms.

The service was back online in many areas less than 15 minutes later.

According to the website DownDetector.com problems with the microblogging site were concentrated across north-western Europe and the US east coast.