Facebook gets Royal seal of approval as the Queen logs on

Since its launch on Monday, the Queen's Facebook page has attracted nearly 200,000 visitors, with royalists and republicans alike logging on to the site to view images, videos and news about the British monarchy.

The Queen has some way to go before she matches the popularity of Lady Gaga, who became the first living person to score 10 million fans on Facebook in July, but there must be few, if any, octogenarians who can boast this kind of following.

Her Facebook page provides users with information about royal events, visits and ceremonies and also features the Court Circular – the authoritative record of the previous day's official royal engagements. Users are unable to add the Queen as a "friend" but they can find out about royal events happening nearby.

Having a royal page is certainly a coup for the social networking site which has become a global phenomenon since it was started by Harvard undergraduate Mark Zuckerberg in 2004.

Sophy Silver, head of communications at Facebook, is delighted the site has been so popular. "The content they're putting up is great for a Facebook page, and it's good for them to be getting the information out there. When they put photos up on the site, they become part of the social graph and that's how you get people interested."

More than 160,000 people have "liked" the monarchy page since its launch, with thousands of comments added. Alongside messages of support from monarchists, the profile has become the focus of comments from anti-royalists as well as Argentinians angry about the ongoing dispute over the Falkland Islands and Cornish nationalists, with moderators from Buckingham Palace forced to block some of the inevitable negative posts.

A Palace spokesman has defended the site, which is there to help raise the Royal Family's profile. "It's part of our ongoing strategy to adopt social networking as a way of engaging people with what the Royal Family is doing. The important thing about Facebook is its international reach, as the Queen is head of state in 16 countries."

The page is a collaboration between Buckingham Palace, Clarence House and the Royal Collection and is the latest sign that the monarchy is keen to take advantage of new developments online and follows the introduction of the monarchy's Flickr account in July.

It also joined Twitter last year, where it has more than 70,000 followers, and established a Royal Channel on YouTube in 2007, now featuring more than 200 videos.

Prince William has already been officially featured on social networking sites, with updates about his tour of New Zealand in January posted on Facebook and Bebo by the New Zealand government.

The Queen is arguably Britain's most famous internet user and is said to email her grandchildren, although the Duke of Edinburgh is thought to be an even bigger fan of computers and the internet, using them regularly.

Writer and image consultant Angela Marshall believes joining Facebook is part of an attempt to give the Queen a modern makeover. "Ever since Princess Diana's death they have tried make her image more modern because I think some people thought she was out of touch," she says.

"I think the Queen is aware that she needs to keep in touch with the public, especially younger people, and one way of doing that is through things like Facebook, but perhaps she will also use it as a way of staying in touch with her grandsons."

Dr Steven Parissien, an expert on British history and the monarchy, says it not only shows that the Royal Family is keeping up with the times, but also gives ordinary people an insight into the Queen's duties. "A few years ago we would have been quite surprised by this. The two princes use social networking sites but the fact the Queen is, too, is quite refreshing. I think it's clever because it shows the amount of work she does and that it's not all about national do's and entertaining foreign dignitaries.

"Perhaps the Royal Family should advertise more about what they do and show that they are value for money. In the past, I think the attitude was 'well, people know what they do,' but that's not necessarily the case, which is why this is a smart move. They don't always get things right but they have this time."