Last week, Instagram made changes to their API without letting Web Developers know, and it affected many third party apps that track analytics, follower growth, follow-backs and more.

But it also affected basic websites that simply pull in Instagram feeds.

Some WordPress Plug-ins, like Feed Them Social, still have the free version working, but the paid version seems to be having trouble. Other plug-ins or feeds are also hit and miss.

While this initially poses a problem for Web Developers, there is also an opportunity.

While Instagram's API appears to be unreliable for integrations, their web browser version is now better than ever, and getting a potential Instagram user to the web version allows for higher post engagement as users can now be logged in, comment, and like from the browser.

We believe this is one of the many reasons Instagram has made these changes, so instead of leaving your team or company susceptible to broken feeds on your web pages, we now recommend replacing them with images / designs that link over to your Instagram page's web version.

Thanks for reading - and have a great day!

Paul Hickey has created and grown businesses via digital strategy and internet marketing for more than 10 years. His sweet spot is using analytics to design and build websites and grow the audience and revenue of businesses via SEO/Blogging, Google Adwords, Bing Ads, Facebook and Instagram Ads, Social Media Content Marketing and Email Marketing. The part that he’s most passionate about is quantifying next marketing actions based on real data.