Darren Straight's Blog

ICT Enthusiast and photographer.

By - Darren Straight

Baby Bethany is the Queen of Flickrs Peoples Royal Wedding Album, while Pippa Middleton is the Princess of Search

Bethany was very excited to watch the Royal Wedding”, a photo taken by Flickr user Louisa Who?, has been chosen as the winner of Flickr’s ‘People’s Royal Wedding Album’ (http://www.flickr.com/groups/peoplesroyalwedding) by Yahoo! Royal Wedding Ambassador and former BBC Royal Correspondent Jennie Bond. At the same time, the undoubted star of the Royal Wedding was Pippa Middleton, according to Yahoo! Search. Searches for P-Middy outstripped those for her sister not only on the day of the wedding, but in the week after the wedding by over 20 times.

The People’s Royal Wedding Album – a group on Flickr that aimed to capture the people’s take on the Royal Wedding with a £5,000 prize to the best photo from UK users – hosts over 1500 images, more than 1,200 of which were shared by people either on the day or over the Royal Wedding weekend. Alongside the official pictures on the British Monarchy’s own Flickr stream, the People’s Royal Wedding Album offered a diverse look at what the people did for the big day.

Popular subjects (aside from the obvious) included:

  • Royal Wedding themed cakes
  • Pets in Royal themed attire (mostly dogs)
  • William and Kate masks
  • People watching at home on TV
  • Royal Wedding related knitting and embroidery

The winning photo shows a cute six month old Bethany enjoying the wedding on TV from the comfort of her baby seat.  Jennie Bond, judge of the competition, said “I chose the picture as not only is it beautifully shot, with a great eye for colour and for humour, it also sums up a key part of what The People’s Royal Wedding Album was all about – becoming a historical document for future generations like Bethany and showing the true story of what people did for the wedding.”

Louisa Gotts, Bethany’s mum, took the photo: “I’m a really keen photographer, and having a little baby I’m always taking pictures of her. So when I saw the competition on Flickr I instantly thought that the picture I’d taken would fit the bill. I never imagined I would win but it must have struck a chord, so I’m delighted!”

Fiona Miller, Flickr’s Marketing Manager commented:  “We love the People’s Royal Wedding Album – from the decorated dogs, to monarchical embroidery and street parties galore – and Baby Bethany seems to capture the feelings of so many people on the big day.”

The P-Middy effect

On  Royal Wedding Day, Yahoo!’s UK search was full of the topics you’d expect – Kate’s dress, Beatrice’s hat and Harry’s Wiggly Worm, for example – but since then there has been continued interest in one particular topic that barely registered before the wedding  – Pippa Middleton. With Kate dominating Royal Wedding related search queries for the months leading up to the wedding, on the big day itself interest in Kate gave way to her little sis, who received 1.7 times the number of searches. In the week following the wedding, Pippa went on to clock up 22 times as many search queries on Yahoo! UK than her big sister.

As the premier digital media company, Yahoo! received more traffic to their coverage of the wedding than for any previous event. Over the 24 hour period of 29th April 2011, Yahoo! sites serving Royal Wedding content drove 400 million page views on the day and a record-breaking 50,000 page requests per second, seven times the average daily peak of approximately 7,500, and video traffic was 21% higher than the previous record.

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