Prince George photos: The world's reaction to 'cute' pictures of child in numbers

Duke and Duchess of Cambridge’s son more talked-about than Kim Kardashian

In this handout image of three released on December 13, 2014 by Kensington Palace, Prince George sits for his official Christmas picture in a courtyard (PA)

The Duke and Duchess of Cambridge have released three official photographs of Prince George ahead of Christmas, taken on the steps of Kensington Palace.

The child is now 16 months old. He is the third in line to the throne, and was last seen in official photos released on 22 July.

In the past 24 hours, 27,410 tweets have been sent that include the phrase “Prince George”, according to the social media monitoring site Topsy. Of those, 1,980 used the term “cute”, while just 12 mentioned the word “ugly”.

The pictures were taken by Prince Harry's private secretary Ed Lane Fox, who has also worked as a freelance photographer (PA)

By comparison, 25,548 tweets mentioned “Kardashian”, 5,746 referenced “the Pope” and 11,128 spoke about “Syria”.

Clarence House first put the pictures online at 10.30pm on Saturday night. That post has been retweeted 8,142 times – and favourite by almost 11,000.

The release of the pictures saw a spike in Twitter mentions of Prince George

The page for the public figure “Prince George of Cambridge” on Facebook is liked be 247,970 people. Combined, the three pictures it posted last night received a total of 11,893 likes.

The third-in-line to the throne is almost 17 months old (PA)

According to Google, 206 news articles have been written on the subject of the photos, including extensive coverage in the US, Canada and France.

In the pictures themselves, Prince George is wearing a combination of baby clothes that reportedly cost “just £85”. Retailer Cath Kidston said it was considering restocking the sold-out blue tank top featured, depending on “how the demand goes”.