Instagram followers app

Developers
1

Instagram followers app please;)

3 Likes
2

Ditto this request - in fact a customised list of social media services with your followers for each.

3 Likes
3

Sadly, Meta doesn’t provide an API to read the number of followers. I also wish they did.

1 Like
4

could we read the html tag off the profile page?

5

How does this device do it then? https://www.smiirl.com/

1 Like
6

You should ask them. Maybe they are paying for access, or maybe they are scraping as 1onica suggested.

7

Hello everyone!
My Tidbyt has just arrived!

Since I’m a software engineer, I decided to take on this challenge. :slight_smile:

Reading the HTML is not so simple for some cases like Instagram and Twitter. They use Single Page Application technologies, this means that the HTML received by the browser (and Tidbyt) is just a placeholder, and the content itself is downloaded and “injected” into the HTML in parallel.

Fortunately the follower information can be seen even if you’re not logged on, so I was able to track down the internal APIs that they use to bring these numbers.

I already have working versions for Instagram, Twitter, YouTube and TikTok:
instagram twitter youtube tiktok

Instagram and Twitter numbers are always precise.
YouTube and TikTok will round the number when it’s very large and give back something like “1.2M”.

I’m in the process of submitting the app for review now, should be available soon.

7 Likes
8

@sitnik did you ever submitted your app?

9

Any update on this? Would love to see it live if possible

10

Is your app still a possibility for release? Would love an IG followers app. Thanks :slight_smile:

11

Hello and sorry for the late response guys.

I researched several ways of getting the Instagram followers count.

Sadly, the official way of doing it only works for Business Accounts, and it would also require me to be registered as a verified Meta Business Partner. This makes no sense, it’s too much work for such a simple thing and it wouldn’t even work for everybody.

Looking at the “unnoficial” ways, there are two options: one of them is easily blocked by Instagram, so it isn’t reliable enough for us. The other one will probably work without being blocked, but the data is not accurate, especially for large accounts with thousands/millions of followers.

The way it works is by “visiting” the profile page of the person (eg: mine) and reading the information from what we call a “meta tag”:

<meta content="448 Followers, 436 Following, 136 Posts - See Instagram photos and videos from Daniel Sitnik (&#064;danielsitnik)" name="description" />

For small accounts like mine it’s pretty accurate, but for a large account like Tidbyt’s, this is what we get:

<meta content="41K Followers, 74 Following, 86 Posts - See Instagram photos and videos from Tidbyt (&#064;hellotidbyt)" name="description" />

As you see, when you have too many followers, the numbers are rounded and represented with letters “K” for thousands and “M” for millions. The downside of this is that it will take ages for a potentially large account owner to see a different number displayed on his/her Tidbyt screen.

Also, this method only works with public accounts. If you have a private account then Instagram will return your follower count as zero.

However, if you guys are ok with these limitations I will go on and publish the app. :wink:

12

better than nothing i’ll take it