Meta declared that beginning today, it will add Reels ‘APIs to several Instagram Platform endpoints for developers’.
This allows for cross-platform publishing and greater analytics, within a single dashboard, making it much more straightforward to stay on top of all of your social media posts and schedules.
What does this mean for Reels?
Using the APIs, developers will be able to publish Reels on Instagram Business accounts. Furthermore, d evelopers will be able to reply to their comments, delete comments, hide/unhide comments and disable/enable comments on Reels using the APIs.
Consequently, developers will also be able to locate public Reels that have been tagged with unique hashtags and/or mentions.
According to Meta, Reels will be made available instantly to developers that already have access to the required APIs.
Developers will not need to go through App Review again if their app was already approved for acceptable access control.
As stated by Meta themselves:
“Beginning tomorrow, June 28th, 2022, we will begin introducing Reels to several endpoints on the Instagram Platform. We are always looking to improve our content publishing and consumption experiences, whether people use Instagram natively, or via a third-party.
After consistently hearing from our developer community that Reels is a top priority, we are excited to introduce Reels to a number of the endpoints that you may already be familiar with.”
Beginning later on today, approximately 25% of Instagram user profiles will have access to all Reels APIs. By July 6th, this option will be available for all users.
How important are Reels these days?
As part of Meta’s Q1 2022 earnings, the company confirmed that Reels now account for more than 20% of the time spent on Instagram.
With over 45% of Instagram accounts interacting with a Reel video, at least once a week.
Instagram Reels is a valuable tool for marketing due to users creating an established audience and variety of content concepts.
Furthermore, they provide more exposure than the platform’s other post sharing alternatives and increase engagement on the app.
Although the framework of Reels is nothing new (TikTok & YouTube Shorts), Meta is consistently throwing out new developments that improve the feature for both creators and audiences.
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