The story of tech is largely about adoption, and adoption often comes into focus in the wake of cultural events. Last Friday’s wedding of Prince William to Katharine Middleton was the epitome of an event, bringing together YouTube watchers, Facebookers, Flickrers, Twitterers and even Colorers in a mass collective online experience of the festivities.
Taking place at 11 am in London (4 am in SF) the wedding itself was live streamed 72 million times, to people watching in 188 countries. With the addition of rebroadcasts that day, the streams reached 101 million by the end of April 29th.
(In case you missed it you can still view the entire 3 hour and 37 minute long affair on YouTube or above.)
During the 10 second Royal kiss, the Royal YouTube Channel received 100K additional requests, at 10K requests a second. Unsurprisingly the top five countries watching the spectacle were the UK, the US, Italy, Germany and France.
The official Royal Wedding website was bombarded with traffic, and has seen around 37.7 million page views and 13.7 million unique visitors since its launch on March 2. The event has also spawned the already beloved memes Frowning Flower Girl, Cartwheeling Priest and Princess Beatrice’s Hat.
Princess Beatrice’s ridiculous hat has over 100K fans on Facebook, beating Aretha Franklin’s inauguration hat at 94K. But seriously, what were they both thinking?