What the Changes to How You Access Content from Instagram Mean for You

You've probably heard that Facebook has made some big changes to the way that tech companies like never.no access data, a change implemented to ensure its users' content is accessed and used in the right way.

Instagram - themselves owned by Facebook - will also change how their content is accessed and phase out the old way of accessing data on December 11. This change affects the kind of content that is available and the way that content is accessed by all business/developer partners (including never.no). The change is designed to protect the privacy of users, something that never.no wholly endorses, and to prevent unlawful organisations from collecting large amounts of user data (Cambridge Analytica scandal anyone?), while also introducing new features - a great step forward.

We've had a lot of questions about how our clients, and the industry as a whole, can use Instagram content going forward. Herein we address the changes, what it means for you and how to make the most of the new functionality.

Our up and coming software release will be fully compatible with the new Instagram changes and offers a natural and smooth migration path for all our users, ensuring no loss of service.

What Is Changing?

You'll need a Facebook Login To access Instagram content, you will require a Facebook account to log in to. For our clients this means connecting your Facebook Account within our social moderation platform STORY. In addition to this, the account must be authorized to manage one or more corporate Facebook Pages.

It's time to switch to an Instagram Business Account If you haven't already, you will need to switch your corporate Instagram account to an Instagram Business Profile.

As part of that process, you will be asked to link your Instagram account with a Facebook Page. Make sure you link it to one of the Facebook Pages that are managed by you.

That's all! The next time you log into Story you will be asked to log in using your Facebook/Instagram details to authorise access to your content, it's a one-time log in.The Facebook/Instagram credentials are used to give you access to the appropriate Instagram data.

Aside from enabling never.no to access your Instagram content, you can immediately take advantage of Instagram's Business profile features such as an easier way for users to contact you, efficient ad creation and access to analytics and insights.

The Hashtag Search is changing - here's how One of the main changes Instagram originally announced was their plan to phase out access to hashtag searches. As you will no doubt be aware, this has been the backbone of how brands and broadcasters search for Instagram content. After much campaigning across the industry, Instagram have decided to reverse that decision and hashtag searches will still be available. Whilst this was done with short notice and not originally planned in the new release of our software, we have worked tirelessly to ensure this will continue to be available for our customers.

Some things that are important to note on the new hashtag search:

Up to 30 different #hashtags can be searched for per 7 days

The search results contain public posts, and are limited to the previous 24 hours

To protect users' privacy, there'll be no personally identifiable info (username, name, location)

Now the really big announcement: Comments are now available on your Instagram posts! The best part of the way we access Instagram content moving forward is introduction of Comment searches - enabling you to access Comments under your Instagram posts. This will allow you to collect all the comments (and usernames) from your audience for each of your Instagram posts.

The Comment Search will work similar to the Facebook Comments Search in STORY. It's a great way to instigate a discussion around your posts and then access all the associated comments and opinions for use as part of your campaign or broadcast.

What does this mean for never.no clients? As an official Facebook/Instagram API partner, we're always aware of the latest announcements and work hard to make the necessary integrations to our platform STORY as soon as they become available.

The above features will all be available in our next STORY release, and we'll be contacting you in the coming days to arrange a suitable time to upgrade.

If you'd like to know more get in touch with us.

Related blog: How to get Live Social Media Content On-Air

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