Reddit down: Site breaks with pages unable to load amid mystery outage

It's not clear why the site isn't loading, but Reddit says it is being urgently fixed

A sign hangs on the door of an office at Reddit headquarters in San Francisco, California April 15, 2014 (REUTERS/Robert Galbraith)

Reddit, one of the world's biggest websites, appears to be down.

The site has been experiencing problems in the last few minutes. There appears to be no public reason given for the issues.

The problems are particularly focused on the east coast of the US, according to the website Down Detector. But they are widespread elsewhere and the focus might simply be a result of timezones.

The site is one of the most popular in the world, and is used by people everywhere. It is not only an important place in itself, but sends a significant amount of traffic out to other websites and styled itself as the front page of the internet.

Reddit's status page initially said that it was "currently investigating this issue". A new update reads: "the issue has been identified and a fix is being implemented".

People attempting to load the site on their desktop see a sad version of the Reddit logo and a cat that has pulled the computer cable out. "All of our servers are busy right now," a message reads, "please try again in a minute".

People attempting to access it on mobile or through apps are likely to see a message saying that the site is loading, but it never will. Eventually, an error message may show.

The problems appear to be widespread, affecting both whole subreddits and individual posts.