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.
Visitors were directed to the official Clarence House Twitter feed, the
royal Flickr photo account, and the wedding "event" page 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"
"The view of the couple arriving at Buckingham Palace from where we are
based #rw2011http://twitpic.com/4qxlhn"
"The Duke and The Duchess of Cambridge appear on the balcony #rw2011"
"Find out about the food being eaten at the lunchtime wedding
receptionhttp://bit.ly/jUHKup #rw2011"
Trending topics
Talk of the wedding dominated Twitter, not just in the UK, but around the
world.
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.
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:
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.
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.
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.
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