Update: A Facebook spokesperson said, “We made this change because we heard from people that they want more control over the information shared with apps. The Post Search API allows apps to access public posts of people who may not have logged into the app, so we’re deprecating this API to give people more control over how their information is used by apps.”
There are a couple of alternatives that developers can consider if they want to search for hashtags on Facebook:
- Facebook’s Media Solutions API allows apps to return a count of hashtag posts. This is available to a limited set of developers building solutions for media companies. Developers can request to join by emailing contentsolutions@fb.com.
- Additionally, the social network has a partnership with Datasift, a service that gives apps the ability to conduct searches and receive anonymized and aggregated information from Facebook.
Facebook is closing off access to its hashtags API later this month.
Tint, an audience management service, noted in an email to its users that the social network has scheduled deprecation of the API endpoint that allows it to access hashtag data on April 30.
Tint said the API in question began returning errors yesterday and that Facebook has confirmed it is no longer supporting the API used for hashtags. That means services which plug into the social network will not be able to access hashtag data and statistics.
Image credit: Gil C / Shutterstock.com
Read next: All our coverage from Facebook’s F8 conference this year
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