The Social Royal Wedding

Kate Middleton is something of a Diana 2.0, at least according to @mikeschwede recently, and this was indeed the impression of those who followed the buzz surrounding her wedding to Prince William. As soon as the wedding was over, various sources published some very interesting figures on the use of social media during the wedding. I took a closer look at them.

YouTube was the center of the royal online activities, with its own "Royal Channel". On the page set up especially for the wedding, I felt as up-to-date as if I were traveling behind the bride and groom in a gilded carriage. Not only was I able to follow the entire ceremony, but I could also check the route the royal cars and carriages took to Westminster Abbey, where the rest of the guests and the celebrating crowd (2274 people checked in on Foursquare) were waiting for their monarchs-to-be. I was also able to immortalize myself in the "social media book of congratulations". By uploading a self-recorded video message. According to Techcrunch, the Royal Wedding has been viewed over 100 million times to date. On Facebook, British users (during the wedding itself) posted 47 updates per second. 684,399 status updates in total. The word "Royal Wedding" was mentioned 1.77 million times on Facebook in the four weeks leading up to the wedding. In addition, there were 1.8 million posts from the USA.

However, Twitter experienced the biggest buzz on the topic. The event was tweeted about 2.1 million times during the wedding week. There was a special Twitter chat where viewers could share their opinions and impressions live with others. 3.5 million tweets have passed through the social media portal since the engagement was announced.
Impressive. Or ...? But when I compared these figures with the estimated 2 billion people who are said to have watched the event on TV, I thought: "Oppla ... Not even that much." Or is it?

Well, while you can simply consume TV, with social media you have to be active yourself. At least when posting. However, there are two other reasons why #royalwedding still heralds the beginning of a new era. And not just for the House of Windsor.
Firstly, the convergence between traditional and social media. All of the world's major TV stations have combined social media and TV to enable their viewers to engage in this mutual dialog. With Facebook questions on "Who is the best dressed?" or with a Facebook chat stream. ITN went even further and integrated its live broadcast on the Facebook page. It reached 3.5 million streams.

This leads to the second reason: the social component. There is hardly any other occasion that is discussed as much as a wedding and this goes hand in hand with my thesis that social media is "people talking with people about things they care about". No wonder the topic "wedding dress" dominates the social buzz with 72.9 percent.

Conclusion: The British prince's wedding will go down in media history as the first major "two-screen" event. And the way in which events are dealt with in the media is reaching new - i.e. participatory - dimensions.