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December 22, 2007

Her Majesty The Queen Joins YouTube

Duncan Riley

38 comments »

queen.jpgQueen Elizabeth II’s Christmas Message (Americans read here) will join the 21st century this year with the Royal Family launching its own YouTube channel.

The Royal Channel will feature the annual Christmas Day message as well as recent and historical footage of Her Majesty and other members of the Royal Family. The launch of the YouTube channel will mark the 50th anniversary of the Queen’s first televised Christmas Address in 1957.

According to the Guardian the Queen “was not immediately acquainted with the YouTube phenomenon” but personally approved the channel after encouragement from her family, including Princesses Beatrice and Eugenie who are said to be both avid Facebook fans.

Footage available on the site includes footage from the 1923 wedding of the future George VI to Lady Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon (later the Queen Mother) and historic footage from 1917 of Queen Alexandra visiting rose sellers in London’s West End.

The Queens Christmas message is a tradition in Commonwealth countries and is usually broadcast in full in most of them. As well holding the position of Queen of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, HRH Elizabeth II is also Queen of Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Jamaica, Barbados, the Bahamas, Grenada, Papua New Guinea, the Solomon Islands, Tuvalu, Saint Lucia, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Antigua and Barbuda, Belize, and Saint Kitts and Nevis.

(image credit: Artists Footsteps)

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This entry was posted on Saturday, December 22nd, 2007 at 11:38 pm and is filed under Company & Product Profiles. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

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  1. Geek And Poke

    December 23rd, 2007 at 1:19 am

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Comments

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  1. Preshit

    December 22nd, 2007 at 11:52 pm

    Queen Elizabeth II’s Christmas Message (Americans read here)

    I don’t live in the UK, nor am I an American. I still read TechCrunch. What do I read ?

  2. Thomas

    December 23rd, 2007 at 12:03 am

    uncertainty, speed of change, new medium,…

    that speech seems to be more topical then ever

  3. Duncan Riley

    December 23rd, 2007 at 12:07 am

    Preshit
    read what ever you want…but I’m presuming the vast majority of American’s wouldn’t have the faintest idea what it was hence the reference.

  4. Everett

    December 23rd, 2007 at 12:14 am

    ^ AGREE!

  5. JasonMcIntyre

    December 23rd, 2007 at 12:17 am

    This page is quite impressive … if politicians can do it then why not the royals ?

  6. SuperOpenSocial

    December 23rd, 2007 at 12:22 am

    Hi Liz.. how do you do?

  7. Silicon Valley

    December 23rd, 2007 at 12:30 am

    Adding comments has been disabled for this video.

    Look but don’t talk

  8. Jon

    December 23rd, 2007 at 12:31 am

    Abolish the Royals, they are completely useless in modern times… who needs them when we got Britney Spears right? ;-)

    Jon

  9. joe

    December 23rd, 2007 at 12:33 am

    Maybe Mike can interview her too for her stance on Technology? And we could vote on it?

  10. Preshit

    December 23rd, 2007 at 1:12 am

    @Duncan:
    Just as the Americans, people from most parts of the world too won’t have the slightest idea what the reference was :)
    Hence my post. You could have mentioned “rest of the world read here”

    ( Yea, I’m being picky :D )

  11. atanu

    December 23rd, 2007 at 1:23 am

    and yet again, mr. duncan riley shows why he should never have left his career as a barista.

  12. Jesus H Christ

    December 23rd, 2007 at 1:32 am

    I could’nt care less. got any paris hilton news? i need more info about useless people

  13. CAR

    December 23rd, 2007 at 1:43 am

    is she still alive? lol #12

  14. Marc

    December 23rd, 2007 at 2:00 am

    @Preshit

    I agree that it probably wasn’t that clever to say “Americans read here” but I am sure he didn’t mean insult to anyone and would probably change it if he saw your comment. The bloggers at TechCrunch are probably very aware of their international community.

    P.s Alexa says

    United States 44.1%
    United Kingdom 5.9%
    Canada 5.1%
    France 5.1%
    Germany 4.1%

  15. Marc

    December 23rd, 2007 at 2:01 am

    @Preshit

    I agree that it probably wasn’t that clever to say “Americans read here” but I am sure he didn’t mean insult to anyone and would probably change it if he saw your comment. The bloggers at TechCrunch are probably very aware of their international community.

    P.s Alexa says TechCrunch viewers come from

    United States 44.1%
    United Kingdom 5.9%
    Canada 5.1%
    France 5.1%
    Germany 4.1%

  16. Preshit

    December 23rd, 2007 at 2:25 am

    Hey @Marc:
    I did not mean that I felt, that he intended to, either. My comment had a funny tone. Maybe I wasn’t obvious enough :)

    Oh well, we Indians _are_ like that.

  17. desik

    December 23rd, 2007 at 3:18 am

    A thousand years of inbreeding reduced to a disabled comments channel on YouTube..

    Next!!!

  18. sage

    December 23rd, 2007 at 3:19 am

    where is Saint Kitts?

  19. Marc

    December 23rd, 2007 at 3:20 am

    Nah it makes sense to disable comments, it would be used for flaming.

  20. desik

    December 23rd, 2007 at 3:27 am

    @ marc

    Right, lets disable voting in the UK too to prevent anything but mindless flagwaving…

  21. Guy Brooks

    December 23rd, 2007 at 3:42 am

    hehehe she should join

    http://www.wannago.com

    they’re launching in the UK soon hehehe…

    Guy :P

  22. uploadchoice

    December 23rd, 2007 at 4:59 am

    They could have better started their own channel like youtube.

  23. Marc

    December 23rd, 2007 at 5:38 am

    Desik you can hardly compare internet commenting to a democratic vote. I say the commenting should be disabled to stop braindead flamers, you say that is the same as not having an election, stop looking for problems…

  24. desik

    December 23rd, 2007 at 7:01 am

    monarchic mashups at public expense are a problem Marc

    anyone know if there any other Heads of State who have a channel on youtube as this development could start a trend.

  25. DiggthisMotherfu**er

    December 23rd, 2007 at 9:32 am

    Please leave the comments section on!

  26. StyleSwag

    December 23rd, 2007 at 11:50 am

    Hi.

    It was good to ad a link for Americans. You know most of us probably couldn’t pick her out of a lineup. Now SpongeBob on the other hand…

    PS. Great site.

  27. Peter

    December 23rd, 2007 at 2:02 pm

    UK Prime Minister has a Youtube: http://www.youtube.com/10DowningStreet
    and France’s president Nicolas Sarkozy has one but I haven’t found it yet - there are so many anti-Sarko sites I can’t find his own one!

  28. Peter

    December 23rd, 2007 at 2:53 pm

    Found it! I guessed it would be http://www.youtube.com/nicolassarkozy and it is. He also has his own website http://www.sarkozy.fr .

  29. Alize

    December 23rd, 2007 at 5:18 pm

    I think the alternative speech is being broadcast at the same time a little more interesting. Here it is leaked on their website.

    http://www.sumo.tv/watch.php?video=3458929

  30. Ballmer

    December 23rd, 2007 at 6:57 pm

    I have met her, she does not look like that any more.

    fakesteveballmer.blogspot.com/

  31. Joe T

    December 23rd, 2007 at 7:06 pm

    OK, now watch for a buch of spoof YouTube sites mocking the Royals…

  32. Рыбалка

    December 23rd, 2007 at 7:17 pm

    Look but don’t talk

  33. odonja09

    December 23rd, 2007 at 9:20 pm

    I am interested to know how alexa collected statistics on who reads TechCrunch, I am from Australia, and though I take absolutely no offence, because it is statistics, and you can’t argue with that, I would like to know what the Percentage of Australians that read TechCrunch are.

    though the lack of Australians probably explains the passivity of the comments on this article :). I am sure there are many Australians who have a lot to say about the monarchy, and I can understand why comments are not allowed on the video. I really don’t care wether we have her as a Queen or not, but I feel it is a bit hurtful that she does not even have a holiday house here :)

  34. Shakir Razak

    December 24th, 2007 at 12:14 pm

    Hi,

    Just think about this: this one woman was involved in the introduction, via her first televised annual message: live television speech, Colour Tv transmitted live via satellite around the world and Now this -All within about 50 years.

    How sometimes with the constant stream of media and PR, we don’t realise the giants who’s shoulders we stand on.

    One issue I have with all these public figures is the way they’re playing googles game in making Youtube the only site for all dis-intermediated media from the presidents to the BBC, when they should, by virtue of taxpayers paying the bills and competitive fairness, be neutral and agnostic, by multi-loading their youtube content onto it’s competitors.

    Yours kindly,

    Shakir Razak

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