Queen Elizabeth II First Tweet: British Monarch Makes Social Media History

By Staff Reporter | Oct 24, 2014 12:09 PM EDT

TEXT SIZE    

Queen Elizabeth II stunned the cyber realm when she posted her first official tweet on Twitter. The message grabbed a flurry of attention undoubtedly making it a remarkable social media history.

According to Independent UK, Queen Elizabeth II made her first official tweet Oct. 24 during the opening of the new Information Age exhibition gallery at London's Science Museum.

The Queen's social media message received widespread social media attention. It has over eight thousand retweets and seven thousand favorites. However, some have asked where or not it was actually sent by the Queen herself.

CNN reported Queen Elizabeth II of Britain finally joined the twenty-first century communication craze when she posted her first tweet Friday. She signed herself as Elizabeth R., for regina or queen. The British Monarch welcomed guests to a new Information Age gallery centered on the evolution of modern communications at the Science Museum in London.

The queen's first royal tweet was posted to the official British Monarchy account on social media site, Twitter. The social media account has more than 700,000 followers.   

"It is a pleasure to open the Information Age exhibition today at the @ScienceMuseum and I hope people will enjoy visiting. Elizabeth R," the message posted that went out at 11:35 a.m. to 724,000 followers of the @BritishMonarchy account.

As stated by The Guardian, the account had previously been managed by palace officials.

Queen Elizabeth II arrived at the Science Museum in London on Friday to open and tour the UK's first permanent gallery dedicated to the history of information and communications technology.

To date, "Information Age: Six Networks That Changed Our World" exhibition is the biggest and most ambitious gallery the Science Museum has organized. It spans over 200 years of innovation in communication and information technologies.

The Science Museum Director Ian Blatchford invited Queen Elizabeth II to open the gallery.

 "I mentioned earlier that Queen Victoria took a great interest in the invention of the telephone, and Your Majesty has followed in this tradition of embracing new technology," Blatchford said to the queen.  "You made the first live Christmas broadcast in 1957 and an event relished by historians took place on 26 March 1976, when you became the first monarch to send an email, during a visit to the Royal Signals and Radar Establishment."

 "May I now invite you to join me so that you may send your first tweet," he told Queen Elizabeth II.

In front of about 600 visitors that included communications entrepreneurs and experts Lady Lane-Fox, Hermann Hauser, Mo Ibrahim, Professor Steve Furber and Sir Nigel Shadbolt, the Royal Monarch send her initial tweet.

After Queen Elizabeth II's first email in 1976 during a visit to a British army base, the royal monarch once again made cyber history as she posted her first ever tweet on social media this 2014.  

pre post  |  next post
More Sections