Queen's Monarchy Facebook page gets 200,000 'like' minds

Royal updates are now on Facebook

The Queen's Facebook page has attracted nearly 200,000 approving visitors since it launched on Monday.

Both royalists and republicans have visited the social networking site to view news about the British monarchy.

It is not a personal profile page so users cannot "poke" the Queen or add her as a friend, but they can opt to "like" the service and get updates. By Thursday morning, 192,939 had done so.

Buckingham Palace said Facebook's "international reach" was important.

The page is so far providing more than 191,700 users with information about royal events, visits and ceremonies, which are searchable on a UK map.

It also features the Court Circular - the authoritative record of the previous day's official royal engagements.

Sophy Silver, head of communications at Facebook, said they were "really pleased" the site had such support.

"The content they're putting up is great for a Facebook page, and it's good for them to be getting the information out there. When they put photos up on the site, they become part of the social graph and that's how you get people interested."

A spokesman for Buckingham Palace said: "It's part of our ongoing strategy toadopt social networking as a way of engaging people with what the Royal Family is doing.

"The important thing about Facebook is its international reach, as the Queen is head of state in 16 countries."

The launch followed the introduction of the monarchy's Flickr photo-sharing account earlier this year. It also joined Twitter in 2009, where it has more than 70,000 followers, and established a Royal Channel on YouTube in 2007.

The Facebook page is a collaboration between Buckingham Palace, Clarence House and the Royal Collection.