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I've been using instagram's real time push api (http://instagram.com/developer/realtime/) for a long time to get updates on a specific location. I use the highest possible value for "radius", which is 5000m . For the last 4 weeks, I have noticed that I received significantly less updates through the API (but not zero). Other applications seem to have the same issue, like http://now.jit.su/ . I also filed a bug report at instagram, which went unanswered.

My questions are: - has anything changed in the API? - has anything changed in the app (so that not every photo will be published)? - is anyone else experiencing this issue? - is there anything I can try to get it working again?

I know this is not exactly a perfect SO question, but I was not able to dig anything up on google, and the instagram developer pages direct here for support. Any help is greatly appreciated.

Philipp
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    We are seeing the same thing. Different keys have been tried to no avail. – corolla Jan 21 '15 at 11:37
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    Same here -- Additionally, if I query the REST `/media/search` API with the exact same { latitude, longitude, and radius } values of my Real-time Geography Subscription, the response consistently includes recent media objects that were never "caught" by the Real-time API. – Dan Mar 07 '15 at 00:15
  • Did they answer your bug report? – Gonzalingui May 11 '15 at 21:04
  • I never did. I check the API frequently and haven't seen any changes since I opened this question, without any change whatsoever. I even tried different keys from a different user, without success. – Philipp May 12 '15 at 11:57
  • Sorry, I meant 'I never did receive an answer' – Philipp May 14 '15 at 08:01
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    Just a note that starting Nov 17, 2015, Instagram has deprecated realtime subscriptions for tags, location and geography. – kehers Nov 20 '15 at 21:09
  • But only for new apps, old ones are supposed to work without a change, as far as I can see – Philipp Nov 21 '15 at 07:13

2 Answers2

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Had some communication recently with a contact at Instagram and he mentioned that Instagram's real-time functionality will be limited to only user subscriptions in the future.

Apps created before November 17, 2015 will continue to receive updates but are being sampled because of the load they are experiencing and the fact that the architecture used for this does not scale well. He also mentioned that, as a result, real-time subscriptions will be deprecated for Tags, Locations and Geographies.

The developer guides also have some information regarding this:

OLD: https://www.instagram.com/developer/deprecated/realtime/

NEW: https://www.instagram.com/developer/subscriptions/

nithinisreddy
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  • Thanks! That was really helpful! – Philipp Jan 23 '16 at 16:52
  • This question might be a bit too late now: we now do not have any possibility for receiving realtime updates from Instagram API? I am doing it with twitter right now for some project in my freetime and though it would be amazing to use Instagram too... – chAlexey Mar 08 '16 at 21:57
  • You still might be able to if you already created your Instagram client before Nov 17, 2015. However, we did experience degraded real-time performance for our clients. – nithinisreddy Mar 10 '16 at 02:34
  • So there is no other human way, to subscribe to a hashtag and get posts in real time ? – omarojo Apr 16 '16 at 06:43
  • Correct. If it still works somehow, it won't anymore starting June 1st, 2016. – nithinisreddy Apr 18 '16 at 18:17
  • @nithinisreddy any insight about how the sampling works? My app is approved for the new api. I'm subscribed to users/media and noticing it works 100% of the time for some users and 0% of the time for others. Also, will apps created after 11/17/16 be sampled too? I understand sampling tags and locations, but missing a user's post makes the feature useless. – gerbz May 27 '16 at 17:43
  • @ggwarpig User subscription updates should not be sampled at all. It is possible that those users(that you are not getting updates for) have not granted your app the new permissions that are required by the platform update. If this is indeed the case, you will need to have them re-authenticate. – nithinisreddy Jun 09 '16 at 18:09
  • @nithinisreddy subscriptions only require basic permissions and per the documentation, "All approved apps have basic access by default". So I don't think thats the case. I had some problematic users revoke/re-authenticate since June 1, I confirmed their new access tokens work and still no pings. Other users are no problem. My hunch, at the moment, is that if multiple apps are subscribed to receive notifications for a user, only one of them gets it. – gerbz Jun 11 '16 at 22:41
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I am using https://api.instagram.com/v1/users/self/feed?access_token=AccessToken&count=100 to get my feeds.

You might be missing count in your api or let me know which api you are using

parveen
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  • I am using the real time api: http://instagram.com/developer/realtime/, and I only get only very few pushes by the instagram servers. – Philipp Jan 16 '15 at 09:33
  • Since Instagram pushes the changes to me (and it's not me polling their feeds), there is no actual "response" to look at. However, when I use the console for https://api.instagram.com/v1/subscriptions, I can see my subscriptions just fine. I can not use the geographies endpoint with the console (http://instagram.com/developer/endpoints/geographies/), but if I try this with CURL, I don't see any updates there either. – Philipp Jan 16 '15 at 09:48