Instagram DM API

Day 43 / 366

Lately, I have been exploring alternate ways to ship products to users. The most common ways are either websites or mobile apps. But there is a bit of friction in getting people to use these. For instance, in the case of an app, you would need to convince the user to download it on their phone. In both the website and the app, you would need to have the user create an account and log in.

The most used app that I have built recently as a hobby project is the WhatsApp translation bot. I used WhatsApp as a platform to build my app, so it was extremely easy for users to use. All they had to do was start a chat with the number associated with my bot and send the text they wanted to be translated.

While WhatsApp is extremely easy to use for users, it is a bit expensive to run. So I wanted to try something else, and then I came across the Instagram DM API.

Just like the WhatsApp API, if you have a professional account on Instagram, you can set webhooks so that any direct messages can be intercepted and forwarded to your backend, where through code you can control what you want to do with them.

And the best part about the Instagram API is that it is free!

I have lots of ideas I want to try out with this API, but I need to make a small app first just as a Proof-of-Concept that it works and there are no hidden limits or costs.

One of the apps I built in January was the Instagram caption generator. I think that will be a good candidate to use this API on. How easy would it be if you wanted caption options for your photo, you just need to send the photo in a DM to an Instagram account, and it will reply with some captions for you. That’s the target for tomorrow.