London, July 29 (IANS) The oldest Tweeter user died in Britain at the age of 104.

Ivy Bean, who was Twitter's oldest user and boasted more than 56,000 followers on the online micro-blogging website, passed away at a nursing home in Bradford, West Yorks, The Sun reported.

The great-grandmother built up an army of social networking friends around the world after she was featured in an article in The Sun last year.

The manager of the nursing home kept her fans updated throughout the night with a string of messages detailing her condition. She finally broke the sad news at around 10a.m. Wednesday.

Pat tweeted: "Hello all of Ivy's twitter friends. by now you will have heard about dear friend. I cannot explain how we are all feeling here.

"Ivy passed away peacefully at 12.08 this morning. I'm sorry it took me so long to tell you but it was a very difficult thing to do."

Her page was swamped with hundreds of messages of condolence from across the globe.

Memorial pages were quickly set up on Facebook and she soon became a trending topic on Twitter - one of the most talked about subjects.

Ivy, a former mill worker, kept followers updated on her life from the hospital.

She recently revealed: "Before I signed up to Twitter all I used to do was sit all day and fall asleep. I'd be miserable if I didn't do it."

Earlier this year she also met pop star Peter Andre.

Ivy became the envy of a crowd of screaming girls after the 37-year-old singer leaned over and gave her a kiss at an event.

Ivy's profile snap on her Tweeter account also featured Pete kissing her.