Whatsapp has worldwide breakdown - throwing millions of users into turmoil as chat connections fail

The messaging app is thought to have gone down in Europe, South America, Africa and the US

Whatsapp has gone down on what is believed to be a worldwide scale - leaving millions of users without a connection.

The popular messaging app is reported to be malfunctioning, and won't allow users to connect to their chat messages.

Hundreds of people from different countries have already taken to Twitter to flag the problem.

Users in Europe, South America, Africa and the US are all thought to have been affected for the last hour, according to Down Detector.

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So far the company, based in California, has not commented on the situation.

And of course, the memes and gifs have already started with a vengence.

Over a billion people are believed to rely on the Facebook-owned app for messaging.

It's a free app that lets users chat and call each other for no charge, as well as sending links, videos and pictures.

When it launched, the instant messaging service - which connects via 3G or wireless networks - was only available to smartphone users.