Royal Wedding Breaks Records on Social Media Sites

Despite a report on Yahoo! News asserting that tweeting would be banned from the Royal wedding (the news site claimed that Metropolitan Police were to use signal blocking technology in Westminster Abbey during the proceedings) no such extreme methods were utilised to contain the use of social media by William and Catherine’s wedding guests; the speculation however, was the precursor to the effect that the Royal Wedding had across social media platforms, and the impact of the days events on sites such as Facebook and Twitter, as well as search engine Google; the results were measured across a global scale.

Reports on Twitter’s trend topics revealed that internationally, at 11:40am GMT during the address made by the Bishop, all of the top ten trends related to the Royal Wedding; it was also referred to sixty-seven times a second on Twitter posts. Also dominating the high ranking topics was the ‘royalwedding’ hash tag, (used to add additional information and metadata to tweets), which proved to be a lucrative investment for a certain company who promoted the keyword tag. While on Facebook, unsurprisingly, the wedding governed status updates, with 74 mentions per second.

The wedding of Prince William and Catherine also saw a flood of traffic hitting sites streaming footage of the ceremony; the BBC bearing the brunt of the increased amount of visitors, with people logging on and eager to watch live video of the event, the site was forced to post an update at 11:15am apologising for the slower speeds experienced by users.

Google reported that at 11:00am GMT, of the top twenty searches performed in the United States, half of them were in relation to the Royal Wedding; throughout April search topics relating to the marriage of Prince William and his bride Kate increased by ninety percent, and according to Yahoo’s data on search topics, ‘Kate Middleton’ is currently being searched more frequently on Yahoo! than Barack Obama.

Further evidence of the role played by social media in relaying the events of the 29th of April is the British Monarchy’s official channel on YouTube; transmitting images, news and a full three hours and thirty seven minutes of the ceremony and proceedings throughout day. The investment by the Royal family in a channel broadcasting on YouTube, and the sponsorship of popular hash tags on Twitter, demonstrates the influence of social media platforms when it comes to global events; with people interacting online, across the world, through mediums such as Facebook and Twitter, with the global population posting comments, feedback and general opinion, at an unprecedented level.