Excitement just keeps building for the royal wedding between Prince William and Kate Middleton. Part of the reason that people are so stoked about it is that they will be able to, for the first time in history, watch a royal wedding live online. From the moment that the royal family released news of the engagement, it’s been a very Internet and web friendly affair. The news conference announcing the engagement back in November of 2010 was simulcast live on the web. In addition, as soon as the press conference began, the royal family press office “Tweeted” the announced on the social networking site Twitter.
So this is shaping up to truly be a royal wedding that will bring Britain’s royals into the Internet age. If you look online, you’ll find millions of references every single day to the wedding on Twitter, Facebook, and other social media sites. What’s more, you’ll also see news items being published daily on the topic and spewed all over the web. There are also a variety of blogs and web 2.0 sites that have sprung up which are devoted to everything about the royal wedding. Finally, a few spots are cropping up where you can watch royal wedding online for free. There are bound to be many more before the actual ceremony.
So what does this new Internet friendly stance mean for the royals? Will England’s government as a whole, including the Prime Minister’s office, start becoming more web 2.0 and social media savvy? Will the royals begin broadcasting more of their social events online? It’s definitely too soon to say for sure. This is a good sign though, that an institution as old and steeped in tradition as the monarchy of England is opening up and embracing the web.
It helps that the two who are getting married, Prince William and Kate Middleton, are of prime age to have fully embraced the Internet. As two individuals in their late twenties, they are firmly entrenched in “Gen Y” and probably have their own Facebook and Twitter accounts. It may be that they demanded that it be made possible to watch the royal wedding live on the web. If they’re as web savvy as most people they age, it probably wouldn’t have occurred to them to do it any other way.
So, as we wait with bated breath to find out what other social media and web 2.0 outlets the royals use to promote and broadcast the wedding, one thing is for certain: we are living in a new era, and the royals will never be able to go back to hiding behind their mossy walls. The Internet era has arrived for them, and it’s not going away.
Tags: Royal Wedding
