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Tag: Royal Wedding

  • Cressida Bonas Makes First Official Public Appearance With Prince Harry

    Cressida Bonas and Prince Harry have appeared together officially for the first time ever. Even though everyone knows the two have seen each other quite regularly for a while now, this was the first time the prince has brought Cressida to an official event. The two attended a benefit event for Free the Children. Harry spoke for the organization that aims to engage and empower young people to work together in an effort to erase poverty at ‘We Day for the U.K.’

    Prince Harry admitted to being nervous before the event, as Cressida supported him with her presence.

    “If you were expecting Harry Styles, I apologize. And no, I’m not going to sing,” he joked as he began his speech.

    Both Prince Harry and Cressida Bonas dressed casually at the event, wearing jeans and sneakers. The two made separate entrances at ‘We Day in the U.K.’ They reunited a short time later and sat together when Harry wasn’t speaking.

    In royal terms, this likely means that Cressida and Harry are moving one step closer to becoming engaged. The young princes don’t bring girlfriends to official events unless there is a high likelihood of something very official in their futures. Prince Harry and Cressida Bonas dined together at The Ivy earlier in the week. They ate with her brother-in-law Sam Branson at the esteemed restaurant.

    Might there be another royal wedding in the future? Do you expect it could rival that of Kate Middleton and Prince William’s? That event garnered huge interest from people all around the globe–not to mention it was Pippa Middletin’s (Kate Middleton’s sister) international debut. From the time the world got a glimpse of her beautiful behind, people talked about her almost as much as they talked about the bride.

    Note to Cressida Bonas: be very careful about who you choose to stand up for you. They must not one-up your derriere.

    Cressida and Harry have hung around each other long enough now that surely more than a friendship has grown between the two. It shouldn’t surprise many people if an engagement is announced in the coming months.

    Image via YouTube

  • Ellie Goulding Praises Prince William and Kate Middleton

    It has been quite a while since the Royal Couple has been in the spotlight, especially since their new-born son George has been baptized; however, in a recent interview with Ellie Goulding, the Royal Couple has been praised highly.

    Ellie Goulding, the 27-year-old UK singer and songwriter, known for her top hit songs “Lights” and “Anything Could Happen,” recently told Marie Claire Magazine what it was like participating in Prince William and Kate Middleton’s royal wedding. Goulding performed a cover of Elton John’s “Your Song” at the reception of the Royal Couple’s wedding.

    Goulding told Marie Claire that she knew about her role in the wedding far in advance, but did not tell anyone. Goulding’s reaction was:

    “In the weeks before, everyone I know was talking about the wedding, and I was sat like [puts knuckles in her mouth], trying not to say anything, I kept it to myself for so long – but no one would have believed me anyway.”

    Goulding also discussed the Royal Couple as well as the wedding itself, stating “They’re just a really awesome couple, lovely people, so I understand why people are fascinated by them.” During the Royal Couple’s wedding, Goulding was able to interact with the couple and stated that she spoke with the Duchess of Cambridge “quite a bit” throughout the reception.

    Marie Claire also recently published Nine Moments That Put Ellie Goulding On The Map. One of the moments included within the Marie Claire article was her involvement with Prince William and Kate Middleton’s wedding. Other moments include: the John Lewis advert, her roller-coaster love life, performing at “Chime For Change,” and her “Children In Need” single.

    Goulding concluded her remarks about the Royal Couple’s wedding by stating “It was a really beautiful night — but then, I haven’t been to many weddings.”

    Image via Wikimedia Commons

  • TV Loves Twitter

    While this is not anything surprising or groundbreaking, the television medium is ate up with the idea of using Twitter to establish some kind of audience interaction. Again, this evolution has been fairly obvious, but the concept hit one of its many upcoming peaks during the recent Royal Wedding. Not only were would-be well-wishers huddling around their monitors/televisions, waiting breathlessly to catch a glimpse of the couple, they were also running to Twitter to share their reactions.

    “OMG! THE KISS WAS SOOOOOOOOOOOO BEAUTIFUL!!!! I’M SO JEALOUS!!!” or something along those lines, anyway. Not only were the tubes flooded with these kinds of tweets, but many of the television stations broadcasting the wedding were keeping track, adding them to “how many have tweeted” pile. If ABC’s numbers are to be believed, it’s pretty clear a whole lot of people watch TV with a computer/mobile device with Internet access close by:

    ABC Tweets

    Judging by the frozen frame, it’s not exactly certain at what point that image was captured. Nevertheless, considering the fact the Royal Wedding was not a 24-hour event — although, the run up to it certainly exceeded that — that’s a lot of comments featuring the #RoyalWedding hashtag.

    Or, as the Twitter Media Blog put it:

    Our work with TV partners like ABC, CNN, ITV, Sky and BBC shows that broadcast prompts like hashtags on-air immediately drive double to ten-fold increase in activity on Twitter.

    Another trend is for television shows to feature desired hashtags onscreen, prompting viewers to include them when they are tweeting about, say, the latest episode of CNN Money or the Comedy Awards presentation.

    There’s a video of this trend, and it shows just how omnipresent Twitter is in relation to interacting with a television audience.


    Clearly, if you aren’t engaging your audience with Twitter accounts and relevant hashtags, you’re denying your audience’s ability to interact in a more personal sense. Sure, message boards are still a chosen medium for those who want to react to visual entertainment — see the AV Club and Ain’t It Cool News if you need further proof — but the immediacy of Twitter, not to mention its ability to keep comments relatively categorized via hashtags streamlines the entire process.

  • Royal Wedding Google Doodle is a Stretch

    A lot of people found Google’s recent doodle for John James Audubon difficult to read. I personally didn’t have too much trouble with it, but I do look at these things a lot. However, today’s Royal Wedding-themed doodle on Google.com is a bit of a stretch.

    Are Google’s doodles simply getting harder to read? I can’t think of one in recent memory that was this difficult to find a Google logo in. This is more difficult than a “Magic Eye” (remember those?).

    If I squint my eyes, and use my imagination, I can kind of make out the word “Google,” but it’s still a bit off from the actual logo-style (at least from what I can see). Let us know if you disagree.
    The first “G” and the “l” are the ones I’m having the most trouble with.

    I enjoy a good Google Doodle, and appreciate the creativity that goes into making interesting images that present the classic Google logo, and they’re often done so in a very clever manner. This one, while not necessarily a bad piece of art, is just a little less convincing in its portrayal of the logo itself, if you ask me.

    Now, the Earth Day and Pac Man doodles? Top notch.

    Thoughts?

  • The Royal Wedding and the Web – A View From the UK

    The Royal Wedding and the Web – A View From the UK

    Well, the Royal Wedding has come and soon, perhaps the public attention it has been receiving will simmer down. That goes for the exploitation by cyber criminals, we reported on yesterday. They’re sending spam emails and using black hat SEO tactics to spread rogue antivirus software.

    We reached out to our friend Neil Marshall, Director of Forum Operations at WebmasterWorld, who is based in the UK to get a view of the whole phenomenon from closer to home.

    “I can tell you that there is wall-to-wall media coverage here in the UK, and that it’s unavoidable,” he says. “For me, I haven’t seen too much spam as I have quite good filters on my e-mail and Twitter, but, it has been quite surprising how business has grasped the opportunity with ‘Royal Wedding’ special offers of varying kinds.”

    “Of course, there’s the memorabilia which is everywhere here in the UK,” he adds.

    “Social media has been interesting, in that there’s a lot of individuals that feel strongly about how this Royal Wedding is costing a great deal of money to stage, especially following the hardship of the last few years with he Banking crisis,” Marshall says. “For many, they are still suffering hardship, so it’s hard for them to accept significant sums being spent. That is countered by many that see it is as just the kind of spirit-raising, positive event the country needs.”

    View Wedding of Prince William of Wales and Kate Middleton and over 3,000,000 other topics on Qwiki.

    “I see it as a positive thing,” he tells us. “It brings in many tourists, who then spend money in hotels and restaurants. The TV media coverage seems to be from around the world, with just about every major country taking a slot in media row.”

    Of course the event has been streaming live on YouTube, as previously reported, not only demonstrating just how big the wedding itself is, but how important a medium YouTube is becoming for attracting worldwide views to major events.

    “Twitter is abuzzin’ #royalwedding and there’s huge interest in who’s wearing what,” says Marshall.

    “The mobile experience is especially important for those not by a TV screen,” he says. “For those near a screen, many are actively tweeting while watching. I’ve seen this going on for some time with live events, and believe it will become more common. Sites such as the BBC are feeding live texts on their website.”

    As of the time of this writing, Royal Wedding-related keywords are still all over Google Trends.

  • Royal Wedding Brings Out the Cyber Criminals

    Cyber criminals are exploiting the world’s fascination with the British Royal Wedding, which is taking place on Friday. They’re using the attention the event is getting to bolster spam campaigns and push rogue antivirus software through black hat search tactics, according to security firm Symantec.

    “As with any major event, criminals have been quick to take advantage of the online attention,” a Symantec representative tells WebProNews.

    Among the threats is a spam email campaign, which advertises a replica of Princess Diana’s engagement ring. This has been going around since February.

    “Furthermore, as we had anticipated, we have recently observed additional spam campaigns making use of this significant event to promote various products,” said Symatec’s Suyog Sainkar. “In one such recent spam campaign, email promoting a ‘limited edition Buckingham Mint Royal Wedding Commemorative Coin’ at a discounted rate is being observed.”

    Royal Wedding Spam Email

    As noted, the threats don’t stop at email. All kinds of search terms related to Prince William, Kate Middleton, and the royal wedding are being searched for by interested Internet users. This has been quite clear, looking at Google Trends from day to day.

    Fake pages are being set up to rank for terms that people are searching for. “At one point, a search for ‘william and kate movie imdb’ returned 61 malicious links in the first 100 search results,” said Sainkar. “Fifty-eight of the first 100 results for the search term ‘princess diana death photos’ and 45 of the first 100 results for the search term ‘royal wedding guest list kanye’ also led to malicious sites.”

    Royal Wedding search spam

    Other search terms, Symantec says have been commonly turning up “poisoned links” include: “william and kate movie cast,” “prince charles age,” “princess diana death facts,” “prince harry last name,” “william and kate movie on lifetime,” “royal wedding guest list bush,” “royal wedding guest list snubs,” “prince charles siblings,” and “the royal wedding date and time”.

    “We have seen over 500 compromised sites being used in this campaign over the past few days,” said Sainkar. “Attackers create multiple fake pages on each site and use unethical SEO techniques—such as keyword stuffing, cloaking, and link farming—to “game” the search engine algorithms to achieve high search engine rankings.”

    According to a Norton survey, 62% of Americans are likely to follow the British Royal Wedding.

  • Royal Wedding Mania Hits Twitter

    Royal Wedding Mania Hits Twitter

    It’s almost here, people.  The moment we’ve all been waiting for – the NFL draft is tonight! The Royal Wedding is tomorrow!  Of course, the world of social media is projected to explode on the day of the nuptials, and that fact hasn’t escaped those at Twitter.

    Twitter posted this pic to their Flickr account showing co-founder Biz Stone prepping their servers for the tidal wave of tweets by enthusiastic royal fans, and perhaps royal haters as well.  Funny pic – especially the jab at incessant Bieber fans.

    Twitter’s Global Comms account tweeted the pic, but stated that they will definitely be able to handle tomorrow’s  big day:

    @twitterglobalpr
    Twitter Comms    Rumours of Twitter needing extra servers for the Royal Wedding are greatly exaggerated. We only need one. http://bit.ly/royalserver 22 hours ago via web · powered by @socialditto

    Although the wedding isn’t until tomorrow, Twitter already has a promoted hashtag – #RoyalWedding and “William and Kate” is already an organic trending topic.  Here are two of the “top tweets” that involve William and Kate:

    @Lord_Voldemort7
    The Dark Lord    William & Kate are getting married soon. I don’t really know any details. I’ve been very busy. Not giving a damn is time consuming. 17 hours ago via web · powered by @socialditto

    If the news coverage is any indication, U.S. Twitter users will provide a healthy chunk of the tweet volume.  Nielsen recently revealed that U.S. coverage of the event per capita, is greater than British coverage.  And remember, you can watch the entire event live streaming on YouTube.

     

  • The Royal Wedding Makes Use of YouTube

    On April 29th, the world of social media will explode when the latest Royal Wedding takes place. The soon-to-be nuptials of Prince William and Catherine Middleton, which takes place at Westminster Abbey, is the first Royal Wedding to take advantage of the Internet and the forecast is easy to predict.

    There will be a run on Royal Wedding related Twitter hash tags, Facebook will explode with posts from ladies who dream of being in Middleton’s place, and of course, YouTube and Google will be in on the fun as well. In fact, YouTube will be streaming the event live, and some publications think the video king of the Internet could see viewership records broken as people flock together around mobile devices and laptops everywhere, eager to get a glimpse at the attractive couple.

    It almost reminds one of a family gathering around the radio; however, in order to capture it correctly for this generation, instead of a black and white photograph, the medium would be a mash-up video of various people watching the event on their computer. With that in mind, it’s hard not to picture the video looking like a Chatroulette session.

    Currently, there’s a countdown page on YouTube’s page for the Royal Family — the Royal Channel, naturally enough — reminding us that currently, only six days and 12 hours remain until the most anticipated wedding of the 21st century, considering the massive amounts of hype, anyway, kicks off. Interested YouTube members can upload best wishes and congratulatory videos if they so choose, which is the 21st century version of signing the wedding book:


    YouTube’s page for the Royal Wedding also features the Buckingham-Palace-to-Westminster-Abbey procession route the couple will travel, making use of Google Maps in order to do so. There’s already a Google Earth-powered video of the route, which was previously discussed by WebProNews:

    As for the records in doubt, as pointed out by The Vancouver Sun, the previous viewer record for a live stream was set when approximately 30 million viewers watched the YouTube Symphony Orchestra concert. If the whole world is indeed watching this wedding, creative license-ly speaking, of course, then that number should fall quite easily.

    YouTube’s coverage starts an hour before the Royal Wedding does, giving users ample time to get their drink orders in and fulfilled.

  • Royal Wedding to Be Broadcast Live on YouTube

    The royal wedding of Prince William and Kate Middleton will be streamed live on YouTube. Of course.

    Obviously Google is excited about it. The comapny is in the midst of turning YouTube into not only the biggest web video destination, but a destination for live events. Earlier this month, they announced YouTube Live – said destination and a platform for streaming live video that will be available for select partners (at least at first).

    Of course, the more interesting things people have to watch on YouTube, the better it makes Google TV look too. This past weekend, Coachella, the giant music festival, was streamed live on YouTube.

    “Google search trends show that in addition to the UK and the US, the top ten countries searching for ‘royal wedding’ include places like Singapore and the Philippines,” says Google’s Rachel Ball. “In response, we’ve been working to make as much of the big day as possible accessible to everyone. We previously announced the expansion of our Google Earth 3D imagery to offer a ‘Royals’-eye’ view of the entire wedding procession, complete with 3D images of iconic landmarks and five species of digital trees that can be seen along the route.”

    Last month, it was revealed that Google App Engine would power the official site of the wedding.

    The live stream of the wedding will begin at 9:00am GMT/5:00a ET on Friday, April 29 on the Royal Channel.

    I’d expect plenty of photos on Flickr as well. The Royal Family launched its Flickr account last summer.

  • Yahoo Launches Royal Wedding Website

    Yahoo Launches Royal Wedding Website

    Yahoo said today it has launched a royal wedding website for the marriage of Prince William and Kate Middleton.

    The royal wedding website features articles, photo galleries, and videos. A digital guestbook has been created in Prince William and Kate’s honor so people can offer their advice to the couple. A number of celebrities have already added their advice and wishes to the Royal Wedding Yahoo Guestbook, and more will contribute in the future.

    Yahoo-Royal-Wedding

    Yahoo says its royal wedding website is an extension of Shine From Yahoo, a website for women’s lifestyle content.

    Features of the Royal Wedding website include:

    *Photo galleries: View photos of the couple’s courtship, Kate Middleton as a child.

    *Wedding live stream.

    *Video: Yahoo will feature video from Associated Press, Reuters, and ABC News, along with original video content including a joint ABC News/Yahoo News Web show called “Wedding Royale.”

    *A mobile site.

    *A chance to enter the “Live It Up Like Royalty” sweepstakes: By signing the Royal Wedding Yahoo! Guestbook or by “liking” Shine from Yahoo on Facebook, users will automatically be entered to win a trip to Las Vegas.

    Additionally, Flickr features The Official British Monarchy Flickr stream.

  • Google Earth Maps Royal Wedding Route

    Google said today it has expanded its 3D imagery in Google Earth to include the entire procession route for the royal wedding of Prince William and Kate Middleton in London on April 29.

    Google says the new 3D imagery covers the procession route will allow users to get a “royals’ eye” view of the same sights that Prince William and Kate see.


    The Google Blog offers more details. “Upon departing Westminster Abbey, you’ll pass the Houses of Parliament and Big Ben, the famous ministries on Whitehall and the Prime Minister’s residence at 10 Downing Street. Traverse Horse Guards Parade, and from there, you can travel down The Mall—with 3D trees lining the route—and see Buckingham Palace standing proudly at the finish.”

    “This new 3D imagery isn’t limited to the royal parade route. Thousands of buildings are available, so people from around the globe can digitally experience the beauty of London. You can view buildings such as the British Museum, a treasure trove of historical artifacts, Goodge Street tube station, where General Eisenhower commanded allied forces in WWII, and Shaftesbury Avenue, the historical theatre district of London.”