I know the royal wedding took place over two months ago, but I’ve never been the type of person to believe the phrase “over and done.” It’s probably because I find the royal family, and Kate Middleton’s fairy tale love-story, so fascinating. Having studied abroad in London, I had my fair share of what we called royal dinners, where my friends and I would get together for high tea and embrace the elegant lifestyle. But having returned home, back to my life in America, I find myself brainstorming different ways to link the “royal life” with my every day life. While I’m not the type of person to spend $99 on a Kate Middleton look-a-like doll, or camp outside Buckingham Palace in the hopes of seeing the couple, I am the type of person to connect the royal wedding with technology (an important part of my life) and see how the two relate.
So I’d like to discuss the marriage between the Windsors and technology.
Once upon a time there lived a happy couple that planned to marry on a beautiful summer day in late July. Alongside 3,500 of their closest friends, as well as a global audience of 750 million people, the wedding of Prince Charles and Lady Diana was set to become one of the most watched events in history.
Then came November 16, 2010 and the impending marriage of Prince William and Kate Middleton.
William and Kate were on track to practically triple the audience of the 1981 royal wedding between Prince Charles and Princess Diana - reaching an audience of 2 billion. Obviously, population growth would contribute to the increase in viewership, but much of it had to be attributed to the technological revolution that had occurred in the 30 years since the last royal wedding.
The engagement between the Prince and future Princess resulted in a media firestorm that captured the attention of the British, Americans and the rest of the world. At the time of Prince Charles’ and Princess Diana's wedding there was extensive media coverage consisting of front-page tabloid reports and even a live television broadcast of the wedding ceremony itself -and that enormous 25-foot train – but it was nothing compared of what was to come. The media attention for this year’s royal wedding was exponentially greater. This was undoubtedly due to advanced technology and social media’s invitation to the wedding. Yahoo! created a special blog that tracked royal wedding news since February, and all international news associations, like CNN and MSNBC, had front page coverage on their websites. And clearly, the biggest technological advancement since the wedding of Charles and Diana was the emergence of the Internet as the primary media source. Hundreds of millions of viewers watched the festivities over the Internet as opposed to traditional television.
The wedding couldn't be deemed “The Wedding of the Century” without mentioning the impact of social media, smartphones and tablets – which all received an invite to this year’s wedding ceremony. As mentioned above, the Internet was a primary source for watching the ceremony, and with the advent of 4G technology and video-capable smartphones, millions of people were able to catch the ceremony on-the-go. Social media, specifically, had a major impact in building the hype of William and Kate’s wedding. A Facebook page was set up by the British monarchy honoring the couple, and the hashtag "#RoyalWedding" was promoted to a trending topic on Twitter. If that doesn't convince you of the impact technology made on The Royal Wedding 2.0 festivities, I don't know what will!
In the end, social media and various other technological invitees from the 21st century helped make the wedding between Prince William and Catherine Middleton the most talked about - and tweeted about - event in history.
A Shel of My Former Self
Ars Technica
All Things Digital
Bad Pitch Blog
Breakaway Blog
GigaOm
Influential Marketing Blog
Louis Gray
Mashable
PRNewser
Pro PR Tips
ReadWriteWeb
Scobleizer
Silicon Valley Watcher
Strategic Public Relations
TechCrunch
VentureBeat
Webware
Wi-Fi Networking News
ZDNet’s Social Business
