Royal Wedding: Facebook a hub for nearly 3 million in U.K., U.S.

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The royal wedding found a couple million friends on Facebook.

Over the last 24 hours or so, nearly 3 million people in the U.K. and the U.S. posted on Facebook status messages, links, photos and reactions related to the wedding of Prince William and Kate Middleton, who today became the duke and duchess of Cambridge.

More than 1.95 million people in the U.S. posted about the ceremony, which was more than the just over 1 million who did the same in the U.K. where the ceremony actually took place, said Joanna Shields, Facebook’s vice president of Europe, the Middle East and Africa.

Photo gallery: The royal wedding

During a four-hour span this morning, 684,399 status updates about the wedding were posted in the U.K., at a rate of about 47 mentions per second, Shields said.

Facebook offered more details about what people were talking about:

• David Beckham, worldwide soccer star and member of the L.A. Galaxy, was mentioned 9,000 times on Facebook in a 20-minute span after his arrival at the wedding.
• Nearly 18,000 people wrote on Facebook about Beckham and his wife, Victoria, the singer and member of the Spice Girls.
• While celebrity mentions were high, Queen Elizabeth II, Prince Philip and Prince Andrew didn’t make it into Facebook’s top 10 list of discussed people. The Queen was, however the 14th most discussed person in the U.S., which was the same spot held by Victoria Beckham in the U.K.
• Prince Harry, Prince William’s brother, was the third most mentioned person on Facebook behind the wedding couple
• Princess Beatrice’s unique hat spawned a Facebook fan page for those who aren’t exactly fans of her style, called Princess Beatrice’s Ridiculous Royal Wedding Hat.

In the U.K., the top 10 most discussed people related to the Royal Wedding on Facebook were:

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-- Nathan Olivarez-Giles

twitter.com/nateog