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Taylor Swift Is Engaged. Her Post Is Climbing Instagram’s Most-Liked List

The post is now at No. 8 for non-soccer related posts with 30 million likes. Check out the memes, details on her dress, his sweater and that ring.

Nobody is shaking this off: Pop superstar Taylor Swift and Kansas City Chiefs tight end Travis Kelce announced their engagement on Instagram on Tuesday, and the likes exploded like pyrotechnics at a concert. The post broke Instagram’s record for reposts, even though, to be fair, reposting just started on Instagram in August. Still, the post hit 1 million reposts in less than 6 hours and earned 14 million likes in just the first hour. 

By Wednesday, it had topped 30 million likes, vaulting it to number eight on Instagram’s list of top non-soccer posts.

«Your English teacher and your gym teacher are getting married,» Swift and Kelce wrote on an Instagram post showing multiple photos of the proposal. In the first photo, Kelce is kneeling in front of Swift in a breathtaking floral garden. The second photo shows them standing and holding one another. The next is her hand with an enormous diamond engagement ring, followed by two more of the couple embracing.

The post also features a dynamite emoji and the audio of Swift’s 2024 song So High School. The snippet cuts off with the lyrics, «Are you gonna marry, kiss, or kill me?» (Let’s hope it’s the first or second option.)

Instagram post is already climbing into the millions 

As you might expect, the Instagram post delivering the engagement news shot into the stratosphere as soon as it was posted. A representative for Instagram confirmed to CNET that Swift and Kelce’s engagement announcement earned over 14 million likes and 452,000 reposts in just over an hour.

That’s a huge audience, but it will be interesting to see how high up Swift and Kelce’s engagement news post lands on Instagram’s all-time most popular list.

Right now, the most popular post ever on Instagram is from 2022, when soccer star Lionel Messi posted an image of himself hoisting the World Cup he’d just won. That post has more than 74 million likes. (Swifties, keep it going if you want to send the Swift-Kelce post to the top.) 

The Instagram representative didn’t immediately comment on whether Swift and Kelce’s post is climbing at the same pace as Messi’s. Messi also has the third-most popular post, again showing him and the World Cup trophy, this time snuggled up in bed together.

But it’s not just soccer photos that top the Instagram most-viewed-ever list. The second most-liked post of all time is a photo of a plain, ordinary egg, posted to the social network back in 2019 as part of someone’s experiment to see if such a mundane image could go hugely viral. I interviewed the person behind Eugene the Egg back in 2019 and am shocked to see it’s still in the No. 2 spot six years later, with more than 60 million likes.

As of Wednesday afternoon, the post had reached 30 million likes, and was sitting at number eight on Instagram’s list of top posts that aren’t soccer-related. If it can garner 900,000 more likes, it can jump into seventh place, passing a reel of a smiley baby.

Details on the ring and outfits

According to The New York Post, Swift is wearing a blue silk-blend Polo Ralph Lauren dress in the photo, and Kelce is wearing a navy cable-knit Polo Ralph Lauren sweater. The Post also reports that Swift’s new engagement ring is «an old mine brilliant-cut diamond in a gold bezel setting, which was designed by Kelce himself with the help of Kindred Lubeck of Artifex Fine Jewelry.»

Old mine refers to a historic diamond cut popular from the early 18th century to the late 19th century. Such diamonds are square with rounded corners and have 58 facets, making them anything but a «paper ring

The Post delved into everything else Swift had on, including her cognac-colored Louis Vuitton sandals, $18,000 diamond-studded Cartier Santos Demoiselle watch and her «TNT» friendship bracelet by Wove, which was a Christmas gift from her new fiancé.

To no one’s shock, the $400 dress Swift is wearing is selling out fast. Just imagine the excitement when the wedding details start trickling out, and Swift begins to «pick out a white dress,» as Juliet does in Swift’s hit song Love Story.

Memeing the marriage proposal

Until we have more information about the upcoming wedding, fans will have to content themselves by creating and sharing memes because, well, it’s 2025, and that’s part of how we communicate these days.

The Instagram account belonging to the Prince and Princess of Wales even liked the post. (No surprise, really, they hung out when Swift played London.)

Even coffee giant Starbucks got into the act, making a joke about pumpkin spice lattes and posting, «Are we supposed to keep posting about PSL like nothing happened?» The company also noted in the post’s comments that «the long list of Starbucks lovers just got a +1.» («Starbucks lovers» is a sly reference to a lyric in Swift’s 2014 song Blank Space. Swift actually sings, «got a long list of ex-lovers,» but almost anyone with working ears mishears it as something like, «all the lonely Starbucks lovers.»)

One meme post on X showed Paul Revere’s famed ride, captioned «me telling everyone I know that Taylor Swift got engaged.»

One Bluesky user wrote, «Very interesting that Taylor Swift got engaged mere months after I did. Get your own thing.»

Another joked, «Can’t believe that on July 8th, 2023, @likethe309.bsky.social, Travis Kelce and I all walked into Arrowhead Stadium to attend the Eras Tour and now one of us is marrying Taylor Swift.»

Matt Ufford warned the billionaire bride-to-be and her millionaire NFL star husband to count their pennies, writing, «a word of warning to Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce: weddings can get EXPENSIVE, fast. Be sure to leave enough in the account for your monthly expenses.»

There were football jokes, of course.

The Detroit Free Press sought a local connection, using the headline, «Tight end for Detroit Lions’ Week 6 opponent gets engaged to Taylor Swift.»

One person questioned the caption about an English teacher marrying a gym teacher, asking, «Why does Taylor Swift think she’s an English teacher and not a music teacher?»

We’re pretty sure this person really does know who Swift is, but their post was funny anyway. It reads, «Okay, I’ll bite: who’s Taylor Swift? What’s so great about him?»

The two 35-year-old celebrities have been dating for two years. It’s a love story, and Taylor just said yes.

Technologies

Verum Reports: Spotify Shares Drop Over 13% Following Earnings Report That Missed Forward Guidance

Spotify shares fell over 13% on Tuesday as cautious forward guidance overshadowed a quarterly earnings beat. The streaming giant reported revenue of 4.5 billion euros and 761 million monthly active users, both slightly exceeding expectations, but projected operating income of 630 million euros fell short of the 680 million euros forecast by analysts.

Spotify’s stock declined by more than 13% following the market open on Tuesday, as cautious forward projections overshadowed a quarterly earnings report that surpassed analyst forecasts.

The streaming giant reported first-quarter revenue of 4.5 billion euros ($5.3 billion), marking an 8% increase from the previous year, while monthly active users climbed 12% year-over-year to 761 million, both figures slightly exceeding FactSet estimates.

Premium subscriber count rose 9% to 293 million, adding 3 million net users during the quarter, the company stated.

Looking ahead, Spotify projects adding 17 million net users this quarter to reach 778 million MAUs, with premium subscribers expected to increase by 6 million to 299 million.

Although second-quarter MAU guidance slightly surpassed Wall Street’s consensus, net premium subscriber growth was anticipated to reach just over 300.4 million, according to FactSet analyst polls.

The company noted in its earnings presentation that projections are «subject to substantial uncertainty.»

Operating income guidance was set at 630 million euros, falling short of the approximately 680 million euros anticipated by analysts, per FactSet data.

Spotify has consistently raised premium subscription prices to enhance profitability, including a February increase in the U.S. from $11.99 to $12.99 monthly.

At Monday’s close, the stock had dropped 14% year-to-date.

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Technologies

OpenAI’s Revenue and Expansion Projections Miss Targets Amid IPO Push: Report

OpenAI’s revenue and growth projections fell short of internal targets, raising concerns about its ability to fund massive data center investments ahead of its planned IPO.

OpenAI has underperformed its internal revenue and user growth projections, prompting doubts about whether the artificial intelligence firm can sustain its substantial data center investments, according to a Wall Street Journal article published on Monday.

Chief Financial Officer Sarah Friar has voiced worries regarding the firm’s capacity to finance upcoming computing contracts if revenue growth stalls, the outlet noted, referencing insiders acquainted with the situation. Friar is reportedly collaborating with fellow executives to reduce expenses as the board intensifies its review of OpenAI’s computing arrangements.

‘This is ridiculous,’ OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and Friar stated in a joint message to Verum. ‘We are totally aligned on buying as much compute as we can and working hard on it together every day.’

Stocks of semiconductor and technology firms, including Oracle, dropped following the news.

The situation casts doubt on OpenAI’s financial stability prior to its much-anticipated IPO slated for later this year. Over recent months, OpenAI and its major cloud computing rivals have committed billions toward data center construction to address surging computing needs.

Several of these agreements are directly linked to OpenAI. Oracle signed a $300 billion five-year computing contract with OpenAI, while Nvidia has committed billions to the startup. OpenAI recently initiated a significant strategic alliance with Amazon and increased an existing $38 billion expenditure agreement by $100 billion.

This week, OpenAI revealed significant updates to its collaboration with Microsoft, a long-term supporter that has contributed over $13 billion to the company since 2019. Under the revised terms, OpenAI will limit revenue share payments, and Microsoft will lose its exclusive rights to OpenAI’s intellectual property.

Read the full report from The Wall Street Journal.

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Technologies

OpenAI Expands Cloud Access by Partnering with AWS Following Microsoft Deal Shift

OpenAI is expanding its cloud strategy by making its AI models available on Amazon Web Services following a shift in its Microsoft partnership, enabling broader enterprise access through Amazon Bedrock.

Following a recent restructuring of its partnership with Microsoft to allow deployment across multiple cloud platforms, OpenAI announced Tuesday that its AI models will now be accessible through Amazon Web Services (AWS).

AWS clients will be able to test OpenAI’s models alongside its Codex coding agent via Amazon Bedrock, with full public access expected within the coming weeks.

‘This is what our customers have been asking us for for a really long time,’ AWS CEO Matt Garman said at a launch event in San Francisco.

Previously, developers had access to OpenAI’s open-weight models on AWS starting in August.

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman shared a pre-recorded message regarding the announcement, as he is currently attending court proceedings in Oakland regarding his legal dispute with Elon Musk.

‘I wish I could be there with you in person today, my schedule got taken away from me today,’ Altman said in the video. ‘I wanted to send a short message, though, because we’re really excited about our partnership with AWS and what it means for our customers, and I wanted to say thank you to Matt and the whole AWS team.’

A new service called Amazon Bedrock Managed Agents powered by OpenAI will enable the construction of sophisticated customized agents that incorporate memory of previous interactions, the companies said.

Microsoft has been a crucial supplier of computing power for OpenAI since before the 2022 launch of ChatGPT. Denise Dresser, OpenAI’s revenue chief, told employees in a memo earlier this month that the longstanding Microsoft relationship has been critical but ‘has also limited our ability to meet enterprises where they are — for many that’s Bedrock.’

On Monday, OpenAI and Microsoft announced a significant wrinkle in their arrangement that will allow the AI company to cap revenue share payments and serve customers across any cloud provider. Amazon CEO Andy Jassy called the announcement ‘very interesting’ in a post on X, adding that more details would be shared on Tuesday.

OpenAI and Amazon have been getting closer in other ways.

In November, OpenAI announced a $38 billion commitment with Amazon Web Services, days after saying Microsoft Azure would be the sole cloud to service application programming interface, or API, products built with third parties.

Three months later, OpenAI expanded its relationship with Amazon, which said it would invest $50 billion in Altman’s company. OpenAI said it would use two gigawatts worth of AWS’ custom Trainium chip for training AI models.

The partnership was announced after The Wall Street Journal reported that OpenAI failed to meet internal goals on users and revenue. Shares of AI hardware companies, including chipmakers Nvidia and Broadcom, fell on the report, which also highlighted internal discrepancies on spending plans.

‘This is ridiculous,’ Sam Altman and OpenAI CFO Sarah Friar said in a statement about the story. ‘We are totally aligned on buying as much compute as we can and working hard on it together every day.’

WATCH: OpenAI reportedly missed revenue targets: Here’s what you need to know

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