Twitter down: Website and app not working as social network topples over

The site and its app regularly have problems, though less than they used to

Former Arsenal player Ian Wright tweets about his food at a breakfast with bloggers (Getty)

Twitter has broken and won't load.

The company's website and app appears to have completely broken and isn't coming back.

Users who head to the website will just see it try to load for some time and then stop, with a message saying that the site can't be reached. Similar problems appear to be occurring with its app and with Tweetdeck.

The problems come amid the UK's local election and the aftermath of the Republican's healthcare vote, among other news events.

It also came amid a busy week for high profile outages. It was just hours after WhatsApp went down, taking many people's conversations with it.

Twitter regularly runs into problems with its apps and website, though less than it used to. In its earlier days, Twitter users were well acquainted with the "fail whale" – a drawing that came up when the social network broke and informed its users that it had been forced offline.

The website Down Detector saw a surge in reports over the morning, but reported issues with Twitter through the day before that.