Why are some user fields missing from Instagram /user/media/recent API calls?

Question

I'm receiving inconsistent results when hitting Instagram's /users/{user-id} / /users/search API endpoints, compared to the users/{user-id}/media/recent endpoint.

When I hit the /users/{user-id} / /users/search endpoints, you can see from the example below I receive fields such as website and bio:

https://api.instagram.com/v1/users/search?q=kellyslater

{
  "username": "kellyslater",
  "bio": "#Whappen?",
  "website": "http://aspworldtour.com",
  "profile_picture": "http://images.ak.instagram.com/profiles/profile_8139971_75sq_1333949277.jpg",
  "full_name": "kellyslater",
  "id": "8139971"
}

However, when you hit the users/{user-id}/media/recent endpoint, you can see that these user fields are still returned, but are not populated (this seems to be consistent, and it makes no difference if I follow that user / that user follows me, or not):

https://api.instagram.com/v1/users/8139971/media/recent

{
  "user": {
    "username": "kellyslater",
    "website": "",
    "profile_picture": "http://images.ak.instagram.com/profiles/profile_8139971_75sq_1333949277.jpg",
    "full_name": "kellyslater",
    "bio": "",
    "id": "8139971"
  }
}

So the question is; what is the intended behaviour?

• Should the Instagram API return, and populate these fields?
• Should the Instagram API NOT return these fields at all?
• Or is it working as expected?

Answer 1

Instagram resolved this with a release in March 2015; http://developers.instagram.com/post/112826291271/api-bug-fixes

In summary it was a bug;

There has been a long standing bug where some endpoints containing the ‘user’ node would have empty ‘bio’ and ‘website’ fields. We have now removed those fields from all endpoints except /users/ and /users/self.