Instagram Hashtag and Location Options

December 4, 2018

Here are the details of what we know. But in short the Hashtag Search and Location information will be retired on the Instagram API platform on December 11th, 2018.

Today, we are launching a new Hashtag Search feature for Businesses on Instagram. With this new feature, businesses will still be able to discover content and measure the reach of their hashtag campaigns, identify entrants to their contests, competitions, or sweepstakes, and understand public sentiment around their brand. However, we will now be limiting the number of unique hashtags that can be pulled by business per-week and limiting results to 50 pieces of content per request. The update also removes “username” from fields returned to ensure safety and privacy on our API.

We understand this feature is highly-anticipated given the upcoming deprecation date for Hashtag Search via the Instagram Platform API on December 11, 2018. This in mind, our team has been working to create an API which enables appropriate business use-cases, while maintaining user privacy and safety.

To learn more, please check out the developer documentation here and apply for the Hashtag Search feature under “Public Content Access” here.

Thanks,
The Instagram Platform Team

FAQ

Q: What’s the difference between this and the legacy Hashtag API?
A. We are limiting the number of unique hashtags that can be pulled by business per week, limiting to 50 media per request, and removing “username” from fields returned.

Q: Why did you make changes to the Hashtag Search capabilities?
A: We continue to prioritize safety and privacy on our APIs and removed some capabilities on our APIs. We understand that this may affect your business or services, and we appreciate your support in keeping our platform secure.

*** REMINDER: UPCOMING API DEPRECATION ***

As announced in January 2018, we also wanted to remind you of upcoming Instagram Platform API deprecations. The following will be deprecated from the Instagram API Platform on December 11, 2018:

  • Commenting – to post and delete any comments on a user’s behalf. This includes posting and deleting comments on a user’s own media.
  • Public Content – to read any public profile info and media on a user’s behalf (this includes Hashtag Search and Location information)

After December 11, 2018, the Instagram Platform API will only support the instagram_basicpermission. That permission can be utilized to make the API calls for the following remaining endpoints:

  • /users/self – Get information about the owner of the access token
  • /users/self/media/recent – Get the most recent media published by the owner of the access token
  • /media/media-id/comments – Get a list of recent comments on your media object. This is only supported for media obtained through the /users/self/media/recent endpoint)

 

Your Existing Hashtag or Location feeds will work until December 11th, 2018. We will be making an update on the 10th to remove the call so any existing hashtag or location feeds will not display

To conclude we will be looking into creating an app on facebook so we can also pull hashtags. Keep everyone posted.

SlickRemix