Instagram makes more changes, restores Windows Phone third-party app posting privileges, for now

Instagram has evidently made one more change, hopefully the last, to their API for publishing photos to the service. We can now confirm that users can upload to the network using third party apps like Instance, and that those photos are public (unlike the last change). That’s an improvement from yesterday, where posting was blocked only to return later, but with photos marked as ‘private’.

At this point, it is unclear if Instagram is reversing course out of good will or if this was part of their plan, with the side effect of monkeying with third-party apps. Regardless, if you have Instance on your Windows Phone, you should be able to directly post without any compromises. No telling how long that will last though.

The developer behind Instance, Daniel Gary, has reportedly figured out how to embed the required information that Instagram scans in images upon posting. When that info is missing, the service deletes the photo as it is considered “foreign” (think of how antibodies work). A fix for Instance is reportedly on the way with final testing going on now, though it won’t be the anticipated version 2.0 which is still being developed. That hot-fix will be pushed to the Store as soon as possible to hopefully prevent future outages, though at the moment it appears to not be needed.

Likewise, Rudy Huyn, who is developing #6tagram for posting to the photo network, has also cracked the mysterious Instagram APIs. His app is now working, as demonstrated in a posted video, though since it is still in development the general public cannot take advantage of it quite yet. Similar to Instance, presumably when #6tagram does come out, it will be future-proofed against Instagram’s policies, should they revert back to the new API standard.

Instagram has gone on record to the press and even customers directly that they were not seeking to block third party apps, just update their security to prevent malicious posting and spam. It’s still not clear though that if the back and forth changes are related to technical adjustments on their end or if they are responding to bad press. Because of that uncertainty, the stability and continued ability to upload to Instagram is unclear. That means as soon as this article goes live, the ability could be lost again.

Users are encouraged to use apps like Oggl or Instagraph as backup, should they want to retain their posting abilities to the hipster photo network without complications.

Thanks, Rich D., for the tip!