Ellen DeGeneres Oscars selfie “crashes” Twitter with record re-tweets

Academy Awards host Ellen DeGeneres’s impromptu selfie from the audience set a record for the most-retweeted post ever and temporarily disrupted Twitter Inc.’s service.

During the ABC ceremony, DeGeneres went into the audience and gathered up Meryl Streep, Bradley Cooper, Jennifer Lawrence, Kevin Spacey, Jared Leto, Lupita Nyong’o and others for a photo that she posted up on her page @theellenshow

The post was retweeted more than 536,000 times within half an hour.

Twitter was momentarily disabled for some users and quickly broke the record for most-retweeted post.

DeGeneres went into the audience to take a picture with Streep and was quickly surrounded by other actors, including Cooper, who took the photo with DeGeneres’ Samsung smartphone.

“If only Bradley’s arm was longer,” DeGeneres posted. “Best photo ever.”

Record set by Obama broken

The selfie was retweeted more than 1.4 million times in less than 1 1/2 hours, surpassing the previous record set by President Barack Obama after he won re-election in 2012. The tweet “Four More Years” was retweeted 781,000 times.

“We crashed and broke Twitter,” DeGeneres said later from the stage. “We made history.”