Ellen DeGeneres’ Oscars selfie becomes most re-tweeted image in Twitter’s history

Ellen DeGeneres’ Oscars selfie has become the most re-tweeted image in Twitter’s history, even briefly crashing the service.

Oscars host Ellen DeGeneres posted a selfie including: Jennifer Lawrence, Meryl Streep, Kevin Spacey, Brad Pitt, Julia Roberts, Bradley Cooper, and best supporting actress winner Lupita Nyong’o.

It took less than 40 minutes to beat the previous record for most tweeted image – a photo of Michelle and Barack Obama, posted on his re-election in 2012.

By the end of the Oscars ceremony, the celebrity selfie had been re-tweeted more than two million times.

Ellen DeGeneres encouraged those watching the Oscars – about one billion people – to make the image the most re-tweeted in history, and less than an hour later announced the target had been met.

“We crashed Twitter!” she joked, adding that the service was up again shortly after.

There have been more than seven million tweets using the hashtags #oscars and #oscars2014.