Spanish royals join Twitter

They've been doing the social media thing for just a few hours but already the new Twitter account of the Spanish Royal Household has almost 5,000 followers.  @CasaReal went live this morning and in the last few minutes has published its first Twitpic.  The photo shows King Juan Carlos and Queen Sofia at an event in Barcelona and takes its place in the royal history books as the first image on official social media for Spain's Royal Family.

The King and Queen of Spain in the first photograph published by their official Twitter account which went live on the morning of May 21st 2014

Many royal families already have their own Twitter presence with the British Monarchy leading the way.  Its official feed, @BritishMonarchy , has 661,000 followers - easily the highest number of any royal account.  @ClarenceHouse has over 380,000 while the Dutch Royal Family hits 140,000 with its @KHtweets. 

One of the photos tweeted by the Dutch Royal Household to mark King's Day on April 26th 2014

But sometimes personal accounts can be far more popular than official ones.  The Twitter feed for the Crown Prince and Princess of Norway, @Kronprinsparet, with the stamp of the Royal Household on it, has 70,000 followers but Crown Princess Mette-Marit's personal feed, @CrownPrincessMM, has over 96,000 people signed up.  And sometimes, social media can be hard work even for royals.  The Belgian Monarchy began tweeting  months ago but @MonarchieBe, is still on around 10,000 followers.  @CasaReal may have gone past that by the end of its first day on Twitter.