So I tried to get my head around this but felt the need to allow a new friend, Jack Guy, to put his head around instead. He’s English, I’m unfortunately technically British by birth. So with that I give you Jack’s take….
As a 24 year-old Brit, and a self-confessed republican (in the original, British sense of the word) to boot, I may not be the most impartial observer of events involving the Queen, but here goes. Queen Elizabeth II made use of the new @BritishMonarchy Twitter Inc (NYSE:TWTR) account to reach out to the population, in what was presumably an attempt to usher in a new age of accessibility to an institution struggling to keep up with modern times.
The message was sent out at 11:35 a.m. to 724,000 loyal subjects, or followers if you prefer, of the newly digitized royal family. It read: “It is a pleasure to open the Information Age exhibition today at the @ScienceMuseum and I hope people will enjoy visiting. Elizabeth R.”
Queen Elizabeth II: Social media frenzy
The conspicuous tagging of the Science Museum’s own Twitter account shows a surprising amount of technological know-how from the octogenarian monarch, and some observers quickly smelt a rat.
The flurry of attention, including 8,000 retweets and 7,000 favorites, was to be expected, but the ensuing controversy over its authenticity was surely not. If Her Majesty really wanted to continue her run of embracing new technology, which Science Museum director Ian Blatchford mentioned in his speech, you would have thought that someone could have taught her how to work an iPad just for one day.
Queen Elizabeth II: Royals on Twitter
After all, Queen Elizabeth II must have some spare time in between taking lunch and trying to make sure that none of the male members of the family have another race-related foot-in-mouth moment. As it turns out, a volunteer named Chi was allegedly responsible for writing the Queen’s first tweet, which Twitter’s internal records suggest was actually sent from an iPhone, not Her Majesty’s iPad.
The Royal Family’s foray into social media began a few months ago, with Prince Harry sending a message to celebrate the upcoming Invictus Games. At least he is now devoting his time to more wholesome activities than dressing up as a Nazi soldier for the amusement of his chums.
I beg you not to believe that these are genuine royal tweets, despite the amount of times Americans have asked me what time we English people take tea with the Queen, as if Great Britain were a village of 5,000 rather than a nation of 60 million souls.
