Tomorrow is the big day for the British royal couple, William and Kate, but don’t expect to see anyone tweeting live from Westminster Abbey.
Despite the #royalwedding trending on twitter today and the couple naturally embracing the online world via partnerships with Youtube, a Facebook page, FlickR account and two verified Twitter accounts (Clarence House and The British Monarchy); which all go to make this wedding “the first of the Internet age, where for the first time in thousands of years of royal history, the moment will be captured online and preserved forever”, Yahoo report that the event organizers have installed signal blocking technology at Westminster Abbey.
Hot on the heels of their latest ‘Live’ landing page, is the news that the BBC’s coverage of the royal wedding will be streamed live on YouTube on The Royal Channel, dubbed “the Official Channel of The British Monarchy.”
It is with some humility that, in discussion with Google’s PR team in the UK, SEW found out that this is an altruistic collaboration with Clarence House and the footage will be provided by the BBC.
No money for the rights to broadcast has exchanged hands. YouTube has built the app free of charge but, what is much more impressive, is that the bill for streaming costs will be footed by Google.
The official Royal Wedding site launched this week and Google custom search was incorporated much to the glee of the Google Custom Search blog.
“The website is the official information hub for anyone interested in the Royal Wedding, and if you browse the website you might notice something familiar: instant, crisp, and relevant search results powered by Google.”
Google Earth has also gotten in to the wedding fever, creating a 3D route the wedding party will take to get to Buckingham Palace following the event at Westminster Abbey.
