HRH the Queen: To Tweet or not to Tweet?

Twitter is fast becoming de rigueur among celebrities, sports people and politicians alike and now it would seem the Royal family are getting in on the act.

Reports earlier today suggested that Her Majesty the Queen would be the first Royal to start using the social networking updates service on Monday during the Commonwealth Observance at Westminster Abbey.

However, while we'd all love to see HRH sitting in the pews clutching a mobile sneakily updating the public about proceedings, it's never likely to become reality in exactly the way we want it to. Indeed, nor will the Queen's aides be tweeting on her behalf.

Instead, Westminster Abbey officials will enlighten the world in updates of less than 140 characters during the 60th anniversary of the Commonwealth next week.

Guardian writer Jemima Kiss, herself a Twitter regular, shone some light on the situation.

"I spoke to the palace press team who said that although they are looking at how Twitter could be used for the royal family's communications, it would probably be members of the press team who posted updates rather than any member of the royal family," she informed us.

If the palace et al do decide to get involved with Twitter in the future, they will join hardcore Twitters including Stephen Fry and Jonathan Ross among others, including, of course, IT PRO.

Maggie Holland

Maggie has been a journalist since 1999, starting her career as an editorial assistant on then-weekly magazine Computing, before working her way up to senior reporter level. In 2006, just weeks before ITPro was launched, Maggie joined Dennis Publishing as a reporter. Having worked her way up to editor of ITPro, she was appointed group editor of CloudPro and ITPro in April 2012. She became the editorial director and took responsibility for ChannelPro, in 2016.

Her areas of particular interest, aside from cloud, include management and C-level issues, the business value of technology, green and environmental issues and careers to name but a few.