14 DAY TRIAL // In what the British media is describing as a vain and desperate attempt at remaining “relevant,” the Royal Family is now on Facebook as well. However, the page is not a profile, one must note.
The Guardian informs that the Royal Family and the Queen are expanding on social networks, after first reaching out to regular people on YouTube, Twitter and Flickr.
However, that’s not to say that Joe or Jane with a Facebook account can simply go and “poke” Her Majesty – as noted above, the site is a webpage and not a profile.
At best, one can “like” the page, while also obtaining precious information on events, and see photos and videos to which one would probably not have access otherwise.
“Launching this morning, Facebook.com/TheBritishMonarchy has videos, photos and the Court Circular, the 200-year-old authoritative record of engagements also on Buckingham Palace’s website,” the Guardian informs.
“The royal Facebook does not have a personal profile, so users cannot ask the royals to be their Facebook ‘friend’; instead they can click to ‘like’ the page,” the publication notes.
“Several unofficial pages already exist on Facebook; one, the professional-looking The-British-Monarchy page, is ‘liked’ by more than 20,000 people,” the same report notes.
Fake accounts are also on Twitter, but many of them are shut down the moment they start to attract too much attention and get too many followers.
As noted above, many representatives of the British media are not convinced that this attempt of reaching out to more people is a solution in itself to any of the existing problems.
Mail on Sunday columnist Peter Hitchens, for instance, sees it as a deplorable attempt at staying relevant, Neowin reports.
“'It is just a way of getting people who are on Facebook to go and find their way onto the royal website, I think,” Hitchens recently said.
“But this is what the royal family do these days. They are rather afraid that people under 50 have forgotten they exist,” the same columnist noted.