Instagram real-time API gets very few updates

Question

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.

Answer 1

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/