British Embassy on Facebook

The British Embassy has joined the growing ranks of local embassies on Facebook.

“We launched our official Embassy Facebook page in an effort to keep pace with the growing use of social networking services in Korea,” British Ambassador Martin Uden told The Korea Herald.

The page opens another window through which the embassy can communicate and interact with people in Korea and in the United Kingdom and will complement its presence on Twitter and blogs on Daum and Naver.

“All these sites provide a means for people to communicate directly with the embassy,” he said.

The embassy also intends to use the network as a way to interact with British nationals in Korea, providing advice and consular updates.

“Facebook offers features not available on other channels, such as photo albums, polls, videos as well as links to interesting news and opinions,” he said.

An example Uden gave was a reception the embassy held recently to mark the Royal Wedding.

“We also plan to upload videos of Korean and British people talking about topical issues,” he said. “We also want to see participation: we will be using the poll function and holding events to seek user feedback.”

The page will be updated on a daily basis to provide readers with the latest U.K. and Korea news and consular advice.

“Facebook gives us two new features. Firstly, we can interact with our users ― it’s two-way communication in a way that official websites are not. Secondly, it’s a great platform to put all your rich media ― videos, photos ― in one place,” he noted.

Uden hopes that the Facebook page will promote things about the United Kingdom that are not well-known in Korea and to the Korean audience.

The new Facebook page can be found by typing U.K. in Korea into Facebook’s search engine.

The embassy’s Twitter account is located at www.twitter.com/ukinkorea.

(yoav@heraldcorp.com)