It’s been the subject of years of conjecture and media hype—or, perhaps it only seems that long. And now, after a steady stream of large (often strange) hats, billions of horses, pomp, circumstance and a fabulously beautiful wedding dress, the royal wedding of Prince William and Catherine Middleton is forever recorded in history—via social media.
According to stats gathered and evaluated by Webtrends, a web analytics company, 71% of the royal wedding Internet buzz is attributed to Twitter, 16.9% on Facebook and 11.3% on blogs. That translates into almost 1 million tweets, 220,000 Facebook posts and 145,000 blogs about the royal couple in the last 30 days alone. And that’s not counting today, the wedding day. This morning ABC News reported that Twitter was receiving 10,000 royal wedding tweets per minute. And in one hour, 2.5 million tweets were posted about Catherine’s wedding dress alone.
Considering our American penchant for Disney princesses and reality TV, it shouldn’t be too surprising that 65% of the buzz is coming from the United States. (Britain contributes only 20%.) In fact, U.S. interest caused the royal wedding story to surpass the Japanese earthquake and recent uprising in Egypt in social networking traction for 2011. According to mediabistro.com, William’s and Catherine’s story has been covered even more furiously than Prince Charles and Princess Diana’s wedding. Of course, back in 1981, when William’s parents married, the world had yet to meet YouTube, where viral videos and royal look-alike parodies reproduce like bacteria. And because of the media following her, Princess Catherine has surpassed even Lady Gaga as a fashion and pop culture icon. (I say, thank goodness.)
Now, I understand that Britain’s monarchy is not without controversy. But whether you’re an Anglophile or not, you have to admit that this type of reality TV is a breath of fresh air when compared to Jersey Shore and the Real Housewives franchise. And when Barbara Walters said during ABC News’ wedding coverage, “This is the fairy tale; I hope the children are watching,” part of me hoped they were, too. Because viewing such elegance, propriety, teamwork and centuries of tradition can teach us all a lot more about life than Snooki or The Situation can.
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