Note from our CTO: Instagram API Changes

Instagram API Changes:

On April 4th, Instagram removed access to much of their API. It is no longer possible to get some information for Instagram users who have not directly connected with your brand. This move is almost certainly in response to increasing pressure on Facebook to protect users’ privacy and to reduce their own liability as data stewards. The new Instagram API, powered by the Facebook Graph API, is not a replacement and does not offer as much data access as the previous API. 

What does this mean for you?

Because Tidal Lab’s core products relies on first-party data, there is no immediate impact to our services. The core experience of profiling, inviting influencers to campaigns, collecting content, distributing payments, shipping product samples, and reporting on campaign performance is unaffected.

The Instagram API changes mean that influencer discovery and bot detection on Instagram is hampered or unavailable. Instagram audience analysis, follower demographics and post impression data is available for authenticated influencers who have connected Instagram Insights to your brand. Instagram audience data for unauthenticated influencers is no longer available. Our AI TalentSpider continues to function, working to discover lookalike influencers, but now utilizing more web/customer list sources and fewer Instagram-only profiles.

We have always expected and planned for changes in the way social networks grant access to data. We are an agnostic platform that supports many social networks and data sources like public webpages, blogs, RSS feeds, Google Analytics, customer data from third-party CRMs, affiliate programs or other custom sources. We continue to profile and create metrics on audience engagement/bots, demographics, geography, but with less insight on Facebook/Instagram audience.

What’s next?

With GDPR and privacy issues front-of-mind, I believe that other social networks will follow Facebook’s lead and begin restricting access to data. Tidal Lab’s robust CRM remains platform-agnostic and many of the metrics we build; qualitative ratings, cost/ROI, timeliness, activation performance, “neediness”, are proprietary to our platform, specific to your brand, and fully exportable. Creating and owning original data is an increasingly valuable asset.

Social networks may change, but we remain committed to empowering our partners to learn about, activate, and create deep, ongoing relationships with the customers, creators and influencers important to their brands.

Burak Kanber, CTO