Instagram API changes

Instagram is deprecating its legacy hashtag search API in favor of the new Facebook Graph API, more respectful of data privacy. Instagram will implement the API change on December 11th.

To anticipate those changes, we will release a new version of Radarly on December 05th where we will monitor Instagram business/creator accounts within a corpus that becomes a new source for Radarly queries.

Please note that nothing has to be operated on your side in your project before or after the update (scheduled on December 05th, end of the day Paris local time). All changes will be automatically done. However, in case you are is still using a regular profile, we recommend you to switch to a Business/Creator account on Instagram.

Then, we’ll also be able to quickly provide access to non-Business/non-Creator account posts on an anonymous basis (phase 2). The date for phase 2 updates will be defined soon.

- After the next product updates, the new posts we are going to collect on Instagram will come from Business/Creator accounts only. On average, we do estimate that around 50% of the current volume comes from non-Business/non-Creator profiles. As a consequence, you will see a diminution of the volume of posts on Instagram in the projects. This diminution will be visible in the projects from December 11.

- Even though the volume decrease, the impact on the reach is limited. Analyzing our clients' projects, we noticed that most of the reach comes from Business/Creator accounts. In other words, we will continue to capture up to 90% of the global estimated reach.

- For the business/creator accounts, we will continue providing you the user's details, the number of followers, the impressions, the estimated reach and the engagement metrics for each post as before.

- The posts and insights from non-Business/non-Creator accounts that have been collected until December 11th will remain available in your projects after the update.

- Instagram corpus will become a search feature for the business/creator accounts. The novelty is that after the next product update, an Instagram business/creator corpus will search and collect posts whereas before it worked as filters.

- The non-Business/non-Creator profiles listed in your corpus before the update will remain available after the product changes. However, they will only be useful to filter the project’s posts in the past. They will not collect any new posts.

How to create a corpus:
You can easily add one or more Instagram business/creator accounts to a corpus using their usernames (separated by a comma). Learn more about corpus here.

The Social Performance of Radarly for Instagram will remain available for business/creator profiles only.

IMPORTANT NOTE:
After the update, we will remove all the non-Business/non-Creator profiles that were plugged in the social performance from Radarly. You will no longer be able to access those accounts (posts and insights) in the product. The new Instagram API does not offer this option anymore.

If you are using Instagram for business/creator, we strongly encourage you to convert to business/creator profiles. Do not hesitate to check how to turn your profile into a business/creator account in the video here.

The Benchmark feature for Instagram will now be available for business/creator accounts. Due to the changes in March 2018, we were forced at that moment to deprecate the feature. New API does allow us to reopen the feature.

Which info will we get through Instagram in the Listening?

Business/Creator Accounts posts with all the classic key data and metrics (reach, engagement, contents, bio).

What if a Corpus contains both Business(Creator) and non-Business(non-Creator) accounts?

In that case, only Business/Creator Accounts will be searched for new posts as authorized by the API access.

What we encourage you is:

Do you limit the amount of Instagram business/creator accounts we can connect in Radarly settings?

There is no limit in the number of Facebook/ Instagram account you can plug into Radarly settings.

Is historical data also available?

Historical Instagram posts collected on the behalf of your projects will be kept in Linkfluence database and retrieval will be possible with your Radarly project.

But Instagram historical API is not available anymore. We will not be able to request Instagram for specific past data.

Phase 2:
In the coming week, we will send a new communication to describe phase 2 of the Instagram API change plan. We will implement specific hashtags search that will bring in Radarly anonymized results from all types of accounts (non-Business, non-Creator, and Business, Creator).
If you have any questions, feel free to contact your Account Manager.

You can collect now the Instagram comments posted on your owned posts for Instagram. The comments are available in the Social Performance below the original posts. They can also be returned in the listening if they match your queries.

As a reminder, the tracking of the Instagram accounts is limited now to the business/creator profiles. In case you are not already using the business/creator mode of Instagram have a look at the following tutorial.

For continuous improvements and to fit with the user expectations, we redesigned the Influencers section (influencers list and cards displaying details about authors). For both, we conserved all the behaviors that were existing before the update. The main point was to help the users to quickly deep dive into the influencers analytics.

In a nutshell:

The rework of the Influencers section was also the opportunity to clean up the template of the pages to provide more reliability. Check on the following screen how to operate the main actions.

1 - Access to your custom views

2 - Access the main KPIs

3 - Open / Close the list of the posts

4 - Select all the posts

5 - Select the display mode of the list of the posts

6 - Display the timeline

💡 Tip

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