William and Kate's World Wide Wedding
- Published
Google's "doodle" featured a carriage progressing from Westminster Abbey to a fairytale castle
The marriage of Prince William and Kate Middleton was an event for the internet age.
Great traditions of state were celebrated by the modern institutions of the web.
Facebook, Twitter, Google and YouTube were all given over to the royal wedding.
And, like the streets around Westminster Abbey, cyberspace was buzzing with talk of the big day.
Leading the online celebrations was the British monarchy's own royal wedding website, external.
Visitors were directed to the official Clarence House Twitter feed, external, the royal Flickr photo account, external, and the wedding "event" page, external on Facebook.
Royal tweets
Throughout the ceremony, @ClarenceHouse tweeted updates:
"The Archbishop of Canterbury begins the solemnization of the marriage #rw2011"
"The Fanfare plays! Congratulations to The Duke and The Duchess of Cambridge! You can use our hashtag #rw2011 to send a message #royalwedding"
Clarence House gave regular updates on its official Twitter feed
"The view of the couple arriving at Buckingham Palace from where we are based #rw2011 http://twitpic.com/4qxlhn, external"
"The Duke and The Duchess of Cambridge appear on the balcony #rw2011"
"Find out about the food being eaten at the lunchtime wedding reception http://bit.ly/jUHKup, external #rw2011"
Trending topics
Talk of the wedding dominated Twitter, not just in the UK, but around the world.
Twitter users shared their thoughts using a variety of hashtags, including #royalwedding and #rw11
The micro blogging site's top "trending topics" globally were all royal-themed.
RoyalWedding
#rw11
casamentoreal (Spanish for Royal wedding)
QILF (best not to ask!)
William and Kate
Sarah Burton (dress designer)
Grace Kelly (Princess Grace of Monaco)
Westminster Abbey
Rutter (John Rutter - composer of "This is the day which the Lord hath made")
Anglican
Royal channel
While blogs and social networking sites provided users with a way of sharing their thoughts on the royal wedding, the internet also allowed people to watch the ceremony.
ABC News was one of many broadcasters streaming the wedding to mobile devices
YouTube's live feed brought the BBC's pictures to a global online audience through the "Royal Channel".
It was the video sharing site's 23rd most-visited channel of the day, but trailed behind America's Next Top Model and Top Gear.
The BBC website, which also streamed the occasion, at one point experienced technical issues caused by "the sheer weight of traffic".
Many TV broadcasters also live streamed the wedding to mobile devices, including smartphones and tablet PCs.
Facebook figures
The world's largest social networking site, Facebook was quick to extract wedding statistics from its more than 500 million users.
Some of the more choice nuggets of information include:
David Beckham was mentioned in 9,000 Facebook status updates within 20 minutes of his arrival. Victoria Beckham managed just over 5,000
684,399 status updates mentioned the royal wedding over a four hour period - roughly 47 per second.
2,274 users checked-in at Westminster Abbey using Facebook's "Places" feature.
A Facebook page dedicated to "Princess Beatrice's Ridiculous Royal Wedding Hat" gained over 4,000 fans.
Web traffic
Measuring the scale of a global media event is notoriously difficult.
The number of TV viewers has been estimated at around two billion. In reality, that is little more than an educated guess.
Global web traffic was 39% above normal during the wedding according to Akamai
Quantifying the popularity of a topic on particular sites, such as Facebook and Twitter is possible.
However, it is difficult to gauge the impact on the internet overall.
At the height of the wedding, global web traffic, as measured by Akamai, was 39% higher than normal.
Although there is no firm evidence that this was due to the wedding, the United Kingdom was listed as a hot spot, with the country accounting for 11% of online activity.
Republican option
Such was the mood of global celebration that not even the notorious "Great firewall of China" was set to filter out information about William and Kate's nuptials.
The story, along with a picture of the bride and groom, topped the news page of the country's most popular search engine, Baidu.
The Guardian newspaper offered two versions of its website - one for royalists, the other for republicans
Brits seeking a wedding-free news source had to look closer to home.
Refuge was to be found on the website of the Guardian Newspaper.
Visitors to the publication's homepage were presented with the option of a "royalist" version, complete with blanket coverage, or a "republican" version, devoid of the merest mention of William, Kate or Tara Palmer Tomkinson's hat.