A Queen for the Internet Generation

LONDON, Dec. 24, 2007 — -- Two years ago, she famously confessed to never having even used a computer, but now Britain's Queen Elizabeth II is keen to show the world that she is in step with the times. To prove it, she's become the first monarch to have her own YouTube channel.

The Web site was launched Sunday, with 18 videos showing state visits, royal garden parties and rarely seen footage of the 1923 wedding of the queen's parents.

But the most-viewed clip so far is newsreel footage of the queen's first televised Christmas speech -- the only speech she writes on her own, without government advice -- filmed five decades ago.

In 1957, when the queen decided to broadcast her annual Christmas message live to Britain and its remaining colonies, she spoke of her hopes that "this new medium will make my Christmas message more personal and direct."

Her latest tryst with technology is believed to have emerged at her granddaughters' urging. According to the British newspaper The Observer, the queen was unfamiliar with the popular video-sharing Web site, until her granddaughters, Princesses Beatrice and Eugenie, sold her on the YouTube phenomenon.

A statement from Buckingham Palace said that "the queen always keeps abreast with new ways of communicating with people," pointing out that last year, her Christmas message was podcast as well as broadcast. This year the address will be simulcast live on TV and on the Web site.

According to Camilla Tominey, royal editor of the British tabloid the Sunday Express, the queen has expressed a desire to "embrace new media."