Analysis: The mysterious details of Taylor Swift's Instagram views breaking record

Lets start with a perspective in terms of views. Taylor Swift - Shake It Off YouTube video has had more than 3.4B views in more than ten years. Not an unusual number of views for that time period for popular videos on YouTube.

There is also a marketing strategy to be considered here as media news of Taylor Swift's announcement a few days ago is written in terms of breaking the record of views in 24 hours which currently stands in the picture above at 186M views. This therefore prompted the question, how much can anyone trust those numbers.

There is no suggestion of any evidence of wrong doing with the @taylorswift Instagram account. However the pattern of views over many years on that account raises a question of the timing of the sudden jump in views and likes. Was it really the "Eras Tour" effect?

24th of June 2023 is the date when this post received 74.4M views and 5.6M likes.

Before that it was unusual for @taylorswift Instagram posts to reach 50M views. Yes, there were some occasionally video posts reaching close to it but not a common occurrence. Since then there is an unusual consistency of video posts above the 50M views. In fact almost all of them are above that. An average which has dramatically increase because of a good number of those video posts reaching close to or above 100M views.

The record breaker with currently 186M views but unusually the likes count is only 5.5M not following the proportionality.

Meaning you expect at least some higher level of engagement from Taylor Swift's 280 million followers with an increase in likes. A far cry from the days when Taylor Swift's Instagram posts were barely noticeable.

By Taylor Swift's own sudden found standards the above post only being viewed by a few millions over the eight years since it was posted on her Instagram account.

The is some evidence on Google trends to explain the "Eras Tour" effect but how much of it can be relied on is difficult to tell.

And some of the drivers of the Google trends are linked to the tour.

Has this really have an impact to disproportionately alter the pattern of the numbers of views on Taylor Swift's Instagram video posts? From an average well below 50M views before 2023 to now being over 100M views as a normal occurrence is difficult to explain.

There are celebrities who have build their businesses based on monetisation of their Instagram posts. The Kardashian family is a perfect example. Kim, Khloe, Courtney and Kylie all have hundreds of millions of followers on their Instagram accounts. They have promoted themselves using their Instagram accounts and have made it known how many millions they get paid from doing so. Are they selling an illusion to a young generation who are influenced by the get rich quickly ideas?

Taylor Swift's level of engagement from her Instagram posts is below 5 percent. Which is almost similar to what the members of the Kardashian family posts get as a level of engagement from their massive Instagram following.

Maybe Meta who owns Instagram should make some changes as those followers' numbers are meaningless with an engagement level less than 5 percent. And views count is similarly misleading and does not translate to the celebrity's influence because at times it can be boosted by bots trying to analyse the posts. AI bots now can give you a summary of any video posted anywhere online. There are also ways these can be manipulated to give the impression of something being popular.