Instagram Finally Unveils Its Realtime API

Instagram is no doubt one of the most used services on the iPhone as it has more than two million users in just a few months while there is just an iPhone app. Instagram has no Android app, no website, no real third-party support, however as of today, Instagram is finally unveiling its API, and they have shown some really nice implementations to demonstrate the capability of Instagram API.

Instagram Co-founder Kevin Systrom says early on, they could have integrated a simple API , however the folks at Instagram did not want to do that. The company had decided to make an API which was scalable to a great level whilst providing a realtime feed of whatever was happening on the service that is Instagram. Today, Instagram has unveiled this realtime API for four different elements of Instagram: user photos, tags, locations, and geographies.

Instagram describes them as:

1) Users of the developer’s application: every time a user of an Instagram-linked application posts a photo, the developer’s application will receive a notification.

2) Tags: An application can track a given tag and receive updates every time a new photo is posted with a given tag.

3) Locations: Every time a new photo is geo-tagged with a specific location, the developer will receive a notification.

4) Geographies: Sometimes individual locations are too specific. For these cases, we suggest subscribing to Geographies. Geographies consist of a latitude and longitude and a radius. This allows developers to subscribe to a given area like Austin or a specific city block of Manhattan.

So if you are a developer and if you sign up for the API, you can choose which of these four key areas of Instagram API to implement in your app. There’s also a demo site to give an example of what subscribing to certain geographies and getting updates in realtime looks like.

However, before you sign up, it is important that you keep these API terms of use in mind:

Before you start, using the API, we have a few guidelines that we’d like to tell you about. Please make sure to read the full API Terms of Use. Here’s what you’ll read about:

1. Instagram users own their images. It’s your responsibility to make sure that you respect that right.
2. You cannot use the Instagram name in your application.
3. You cannot use the Instagram API to crawl and/or store users’ images without their express consent.
4. You cannot replicate the core user experience of Instagram.com
5. Do not abuse the API. Too many requests too quickly will get your access turned off

This should also be kept in mind that the API for now, is read-only.

Excited about the Instagram API? We are too! The implementation possibilities are endless. Let us see what developers have in store for us.

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