Instagram, The commandment of control, & Touching the fire. (many will die)

[mattwins]

Spoiler: They all died.

TLDR: The commandment of control is real and I get to join the group that learned this the hard way.

About two years ago we started developing (in our free time) a service that prints Instagram photos with a simple #hashtag. This way, a user could print photos without ever exiting the Instagram application. Over the course of the last two years, we developed a fully working application; all custom coded. picturestork.com was born.

Yesterday, PictureStork died.

This happened as a result of not following the commandment of control.

Instagram made a change that will be effective in their 2020 API. This change makes it so that a user must connect their account to our service, but that connection dies after an hour. Currently, the connection lives forever and allows us to pull their data nightly to print the proper hash-tagged photos. This actually will be killing lots of businesses. There are many developers online complaining about these user access tokens expiring after an hour as it renders their applications useless:
Renewing User Access Token using Instagram Basic Display

It's important to note, throughout the two years, we invested heavily in time and money to make PictureStork a thing. Not to mention all of the hurdles we had to overcome at every single step of the way. Many of the hurdles were caused by Instagram and should have been seen as huge warning flags. It's so easy to be blinded, tunnel visioned, and keep going though. It's also easy to see the end in the future, but not want that time to be wasted, so you keep investing more and doubling down when you should have stopped long ago.

I'm actually not too sad.. Not as sad as I should be maybe. I learned a ton and I'm ready to push forward on something new without violating this commandment xD.

Just thought I'd share. Off to message our users their service will be gone the end of the year and that they better print their photos out!

 

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[mattwins]

Side note:

Since we have a working application, anyone see any value in converting that to FB Hashtag printing? (Yes, the company that owns Instagram and just killed that feature on Insta).

I'm feeling like it's time to call it quits. Curious what others may think.

 

[TCMorgan]

The commandment of control strikes again. Sorry you're a victim of the API changes!

I can see three potential paths:

1. Scrap the business altogether. Not an incredible play by any means and I really wouldn't recommend, especially if you've been successful.

2. Instead of going deep on one platform, go wide on several. You may have lost IG, but VSCO is a huge photo platform full of user generated content that is aesthetic focused (i.e. possibly more likely to be printed). Could you adjust your system to accommodate other platforms outside of FB and IG?

3. Leverage your past customers data and create a print service that affords you more control. Competition is stiff in print marketing so you'd need some solid differentiation, but you've got a customer base already and you may be able to bring some of them along for your continued journey.

Keep us posted on what you decide! A business-pivot progress thread may be interesting, if you choose to continue this business. Best of luck!

 

[BellaPippin]

F

Sorry I'm not big on development but instead of pulling them nightly, can you make it "on demand" and pull the picture within the hour (the API limit) of being tagged, store it somewhere cloudy and batch print? I still see value. You can still deliver weekly. If I hashtag something say, the day before delivery day I know I'll get it in the next delivery.

I'm on a mental quest on what to do with all the digital photos I have from the last decade. Just like with books, it started bothering me having them just sitting somewhere. Putting them in an external drive feels the same, except I have to spend on a drive and now they sit there.

I'm too lazy to make albums from all those pictures and then again, I don't want physical books.

My solution so far (WIP) has been pick the best and load them into an SD card, loaded into those digital frames that slideshow them. Still deciding whether I want to keep or obliterate what I don't put in the SD card.

Also --I don't know what size you print-- I find the little Polaroid printer super useful because you print straight from the phone. I printed a few and decorated my fridge in 5 min. Ofc these are vintage (read:shitty) quality though.


Just some thoughts out of the top of my head.

Edit: Couldn't leave w/o saying I also have a photo with those minion glasses.

 

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[The-J]

Wow.

Just goes to show: don't ever think that those big companies aren't willing to make changes that completely tank your business.

 

[Champion]

Wow, thx for sharing.

Props to you as well, for not being too upset. Dust yourself off, take a few weeks to think and reflect and when you're ready with a new idea, get back to the hustle.

Great things are waiting for you!

 

[mattwins]

The commandment of control strikes again. Sorry you're a victim of the API changes!

I can see three potential paths:

1. Scrap the business altogether. Not an incredible play by any means and I really wouldn't recommend, especially if you've been successful.

2. Instead of going deep on one platform, go wide on several. You may have lost IG, but VSCO is a huge photo platform full of user generated content that is aesthetic focused (i.e. possibly more likely to be printed). Could you adjust your system to accommodate other platforms outside of FB and IG?

3. Leverage your past customers data and create a print service that affords you more control. Competition is stiff in print marketing so you'd need some solid differentiation, but you've got a customer base already and you may be able to bring some of them along for your continued journey.

Keep us posted on what you decide! A business-pivot progress thread may be interesting, if you choose to continue this business. Best of luck!

We have considered going wide on several, and that was our plan once we ironed out the process on Instagram. VSCO is one we have considered, and though it may be possible, it seems like they wouldn't want us. As far as I can tell they have their own print service and don't offer an API for developers (though that hasn't stopped companies from breaking their TOS and making things work anyway).

Before scrapping, I definitely have more research to do to see if we can go wide as you suggest, or perhaps partner / sell.

I appreciate your thoughts! If we pivot, I'll definitely share the journey .

F

Sorry I'm not big on development but instead of pulling them nightly, can you make it "on demand" and pull the picture within the hour (the API limit) of being tagged, store it somewhere cloudy and batch print? I still see value. You can still deliver weekly. If I hashtag something say, the day before delivery day I know I'll get it in the next delivery.

I'm on a mental quest on what to do with all the digital photos I have from the last decade. Just like with books, it started bothering me having them just sitting somewhere. Putting them in an external drive feels the same, except I have to spend on a drive and now they sit there.

I'm too lazy to make albums from all those pictures and then again, I don't want physical books.

My solution so far (WIP) has been pick the best and load them into an SD card, loaded into those digital frames that slideshow them. Still deciding whether I want to keep or obliterate what I don't put in the SD card.

Also --I don't know what size you print-- I find the little Polaroid printer super useful because you print straight from the phone. I printed a few and decorated my fridge in 5 min. Ofc these are vintage (read:shitty) quality though.


Just some thoughts out of the top of my head.

Edit: Couldn't leave w/o saying I also have a photo with those minion glasses.

Haha! Glad to hear you also have the minion glasses! We have a photo-booth that we run, and when we found the glasses I had to get a pic.

We can make it on-demand and pull the photos within the hour. The downside would be, the user would have to re-authenticate with us prior to our print day. Which takes a bunch of the convenience out of it .

The digital photo problem hit me too. I had so many digital photos and no way to experience them. I found they got lost on my hard drive(s) and rarely enjoyed. PictureStork was our solution to that! There was a bunch of print services already, but none convenient enough for us to use regularly.

The little Polaroid printers are pretty cool! I wish they printed in the larger Polaroid size though. I find the small ones to be too small.

Wow.

Just goes to show: don't ever think that those big companies aren't willing to make changes that completely tank your business.

Yeah! They obviously made the choice knowing it would negatively impact many services.

Wow, thx for sharing.

Props to you as well, for not being too upset. Dust yourself off, take a few weeks to think and reflect and when you're ready with a new idea, get back to the hustle.

Great things are waiting for you!

Thanks for the positive vibes!

 

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