Opinion: Facebook: Queen Elizabeth joins George W. Bush as social network royalty
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The British monarchy soon will swap etiquette and protocol for netiquette and photo walls after its first foray into Facebook.
A Facebook page to launch Monday will feature photos and updates of the family’s royal appointments and video of recent speeches. It won’t be updated by Queen Elizabeth but maintained by her staff in a manner similar to the Facebook page launched by former President George Bush earlier this year.
Users will be able to “like” the page, but as it’s a corporate page they’ll not be allowed to “friend” the Queen -- how gauche and common -- while “poking” is considered completely out of the question.
Royal protocol of course dictates that the Queen should not be touched by members of the public or even heads of state, although first lady Michelle Obama is seemingly excepted.
The British press, ever watchful of and captivated by movements in and around Buckingham Palace ...
... had a field day mostly by imagining fictional updates from the Queen and her family.
Fictional entries made up by the press included one from Prince Harry, the youngest son of the Prince and Princess of Wales, whose errant endeavors have been exposed in the national press and on the Internet.
For Facebook updates, London’s Daily Mail imagined Harry posting:
“Wazzup Grandma! Catch my album last night at Mahiki. Girls! Girls! Girls!”
The newspaper also imagined the Queen posting:
“The Queen now declares one’s Facebook page officially open. Now, how does one ‘poke’ one?”
Royal “likes,” the paper mischievously predicted, could include “Corgis, Gin and Dubonnet, Crowns.”
The paper said that the Queen has given the Facebook page her blessing, quoting an aide as saying, “‘The Queen has approved the decision -- she knows all about Facebook.... It’s basically the Royal Household’s way of broadening its appeal and communicating to members of the public.”
The Queen joins more than 500 million Facebook users worldwide, or a modern-day online empire on which the sun never sets.
-- Craig Howie
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