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Millions of internet users were unable to use Twitter for an hour-and-a-half this morning after the site crashed, and the site is still continuing to experience problems.

Users of the micro-blogging site were being confronted with the image of a broken robot and could not view or send any tweets online or on their phones.

While these problems have been fixed, it is still not possible to search for users or hashtags on Twitter.

Twitter has been mocked for updating users about the problem by sending a tweet few people could read.

An outage map created by downdetector.co.uk shows the problem affected users in Western Europe, including the UK, and in Japan.

But some users were able to get access and tweeted about the problem, possibly using their mobile phone.

MailOnline found that it seemed to be possible to access the site by searching for a specific Twitter handle, such as @astro_timpeake for example, then continuing to use the service as normal. 

The service is reported to have started to fail across the web and mobile at 8.20, with error messages warning the network was 'over capacity' and suffering an 'internal error,' The Guardian reported, but some users reported problems from 7am on downdetector's site.

The holding page on the social media site simply said: 'Something is technically wrong.

'Thanks for noticing - we're going to fix it up and have things back to normal soon.' 

The image of the broken robot replaced the company's infamous 'fail whale' which used to greet users when they logged on and the service was down. 

However, users can now log-in as normal, even if the search function is disabled and Twitter has not formerly said its service is back up and running. 

Twitter told MailOnline earlier this morning: 'We've just tweeted the following from @support: "Some users are currently experiencing problems accessing Twitter. We are aware of the issue and are working towards a resolution".'

However, the company was mocked for updating its users by sending a tweet, when most of them were unable to see it.

Some users reported intermittent service using the mobile app, with a handful taking the opportunity to poke fun at the San Francisco-based company.