These are the requirements for the MVP:
Easy subscription to hashtags via Instagram.
Recipe finding per hashtag.
Individualized notification for subscribed users via Instagram.
1. Easy subscription
I want the end-to-end interaction via Instagram. This allows me to focus on the core functionality instead of setting up websites and manage subscriptions. Users must be able to subscribe to Youmami using Instagram. There are a few ways to attract a user's attention on Instagram.
Direct message. A user can send a direct message to another user. This is the most direct way to get Youmami's attention. Unfortunately, direct messages cannot be easily parsed using InstaPy so this limitation eliminates this option.
Mentions @youmami_bot. Any user can tag another user in a post. These mentions show up in the Instagram interface, but are not available for parsing by InstaPy. Similarly, this is not an option for the MVP. However, this would be a mechanism to personalize the recommendations. If a Youmami user mentions @youmami_bot in a channel, the recommendations for that user could be biased towards future recipes in that channel. Although the obvious counter-argument would be that users can directly subscribe to their favorite channels and monitor recipes manually.
Hashtags. Adding the #youmami_bot_subscribe hashtag to a new post includes that post in the hashtag collection. Instaloader allows the monitoring of hashtags. This is a simple enough mechanism for users to subscribe to Youmami. However, the overhead is creating a new post, and including the #youmami_bot_subscribe. Error-prone and demands some attention and care from the interested users.
Comment on a Subscribe post. To complement the hashtag subscription, I'm thinking to create a post in the Youmami Instagram page that says "SUBSCRIBE." This will allow any users visiting the Youmami profile to click on the "SUBSCRIBE" post and leave a comment with the hashtag(s) they want recommendations on. On the other hand, this will allow Youmami to monitor all the comments on a single post identified by a unique id and keep track of users and hashtags.
Given the limitations of the tools and the Instagram API, the hashtag and comment subscriptions are good to start with. Unsubscribe functionality can be implemented the same way via #youmami_bot_unsubscribe, and an "UNSUBSCRIBE" post.
2. Recipe finding
See previous blog post.
3. Individualized notifications
The simple subscription mechanism via Instagram will allow Youmami to keep track of its users and their hashtags. The recipe finding algorithm will search and rank the weekly recipes. The third and final step is to notify the users about the top recipes. This closes the interaction loop with the subscribed users.
To support the content creators, the best mechanism will be to give the individualized notifications directly on the post where the recipe was found. Youmami will leave a comment on the original post and mention the subscribed users. Something along the lines of "Great recipe. @subscribed_user check this amazing #keto recipe." This serves two purposes: (1) give all the credit and attribution to the content creators, (2) grow the community, (3) bring more attention to Youmami for people who have never heard of it.
Beyond Cohort01
Feedback mechanisms. Likes on the recommendation can be an indicator of user happiness. This is straightforward to implement, however, not for the cohort01.
Images and video. @IamEmi asked a question about multi-media content. There are a few apps in the Apple Store that generate captions for a given image. The ratings are low for these features and this seems to be a gap in the current apps. Perhaps an opportunity to bring high-quality image processing.
Platform for content creators. @SVC2 posed an interesting question: is Youmami also accomodating content creators? The main idea being that content creators could have a recipe page hosted in Youmami where they could receive donations or contributions from people who find the recipes useful. This is an interesting angle worth exploring in the future.
InstaPy Mac Troubleshooting
It took me a while to setup Instapy on a Mac. Here a guide to install InstaPy on Mac: video. Also used instapy-quickstart. The key takeaway is that InstaPy stopped supporting the chromedriver and uses the geckodriver and Firefox instead.