The British Monarchy page is live on Facebook from Monday November 8th, 2010. It is not a personal page, but users will be able to view information about royal engagements. However, they will not be able to add the Queen to their friends list or 'poke' on her page.
Born on April 21, 1926, Queen Elizabeth II is now 84 years old, and still carrying out her duties as British monarch. She was crowned on June 2nd, 1953 and her reign is one of the longest for a British monarch. Her silver and golden jubilees were celebrated in 1977 and 2002 respectively, and planning for her diamond jubilee in 2012 is underway.
Queen Elizabeth II is not unaccustomed to using the internet, in fact she is quite an active user of technology. Buckingham Palace established a Royal Channel on Youtube in 2007, and the Queen joined the Twitter club in 2009. Now she has decided to join Facebook.
The internet has indeed revolutionized our lives and has introduced new cultural behaviour. Today, the world is far better connected than at any point in history, although segregation of different races, classes and groups also exist in the virtual world. Can we hope that the day will come when important public figures will not only be happy to be seen on social networking sites, but will also agree to be "poked" and added to the friends lists of ordinary people?
