The Perils of Working with 3rd Party APIs

I am currently working on a very big personal project (details soon!), for which I have elected to use the Instagram API for part of the core functionality.

The approval process for the production API requires you to fully develop your site with the "sandbox" API, create a "screencast" explaining the integration, and submitting your app for review.

After 6 months of hard work and arriving at a very satisfying result, I have submitted my app for review...

Only for it to be declined without explanation.

This is not at all an uncommon phenomenon. This Quora thread, for example, records the closing of Follogram as Instagram decided to abruptly prohibit site usage. This is, in fact, my second bad experience with a 3rd party API - as the shutting down of the Yahoo Finance API forced me to shut down Stock Data Dashboard.

I am now redeveloping the aforementioned functionality to use a completely custom component that will serve as a better alternative to the Instagram integration.

Moral of the story? If you're not paying for it - use it at your own risk!

And oftentimes, it's better to develop something yourself, rather than relying on a 3rd party source (this applies to JavaScript frameworks/libraries as well!)

I am currently based in Montreal, Canada and advise on Compliance systems implementation for financial institutions in areas such as AML, Market Surveillance and KYC on behalf of Matrix-IFS (a global financial services company).

If your organization is in need of such services please contact me on [email protected] and we can discuss cutting costs and improving coverage for your business.