People across the world found the app had crashed on Wednesday (3rd May) evening – with thousands taking to social media to complain about the outage

Twitter exploded as people went online to report the messaging service had stopped working.

The issues started at about 9pm in the UK, with problems also reported in the US, South America, Africa and Asia.

Service resumed by about 11.20pm.

According to website DownDetector.co.uk, outages hit users in Europe, South America, Africa and both the east and west coast of the US.

Many users reported being able to open the app, but not able to connect to its servers, making it impossible to send or receive messages.

Many users reported being able to open the app, but not able to connect to its servers, making it impossible to send or receive messages.

Raging WhatsApp users vented their frustrations on other social media – with some jokingly calling the outage the “end of days”.

Complaints posted on social media quickly made the service the top trend in the UK on Twitter.

WhatsApp has more than 1.2billion users worldwide and is the biggest messaging service in the world.

Reports say the company is yet to confirm the reason for the problem.

WhatsApp last experienced an outage on New Year’s Eve – with users around the world reporting down-time.

At the time, a spokesman said: “Some people have had trouble accessing WhatsApp for a short period today.

“We’re working to restore service back to 100 per cent for everyone and we apologise for the inconvenience.”

CHECK OUT SOME OF THE TWEETS THAT EMERGED YESTERDAY