Social media managers, prepare to say goodbye to one of the most valuable Facebook analysis tools available.
Yes, this week, we bid farewell to CrowdTangle, the Facebook and Instagram content analysis platform, which enables you to track Pages and accounts, glean insight into their activity, monitor content trends, engagement behaviors, and more.
I personally use CrowdTangle every day, and have been able to uncover in-depth insights about Pages, profiles and groups by using its great “Intelligence” tools, which let you compare different elements over time.
Honestly, it’s one of my favorite tools, and it’s a shame that Meta’s decided to stop supporting it. But as with its retreat from political content, Meta’s essentially looking to reduce public scrutiny of its platforms, which rattle investors, and impact its share price. Based on shifting engagement trends, Meta’s decided that it’s not worth the hassle of supporting political news, in particular, while CrowdTangle has also been used to facilitate negative research reports about its apps.
The most notable example of this was the “Facebook Top 10” profile on X, a bot account, created by New York Times journalist Kevin Roose, which highlighted the most popular Facebook posts every day, based on listings sourced from CrowdTangle. These listings were regularly dominated by right-wing spokespeople and Pages, which gave the impression that Facebook, deliberately or through algorithmic process, was amplifying this type of content (note: the “Facebook’s Top 10” account stopped posting in June last year due to changes to X’s API access).
Facebook denied that it was benefiting from engagement driven by such posts, which often included blatant misinformation among the various headlines. The Facebook team also tried to counter the suggestion, by releasing its own “Widely Viewed Content Report”. While internally, it also ramped up scrutiny on the CrowdTangle team, and the information accessible through the app.
Based on this, Meta management raised concerns about the tool, which then led to most of the CrowdTangle team being let go back in 2021.
Many expected that to be the end of the CrowdTangle app, but it continued on, then in March this year Meta announced that August 14th would be the last day for the platform.
Meta says that the decision to shelve CrowdTangle relates to its evolving technology, and changing regulatory conditions, which require more security around data access. That means CrowdTangle is no longer fir for purpose, referring researchers to its Content Library and Content Library API, as well as its Ads Library instead.
Which are not the same, and neither facilitates the research capacity of CrowdTangle via a direct, user-friendly UI. The Content Library is also only available to approved researchers who are approved through Meta’s updated process, so few journalists and external analysts are going to be granted access either way.
Which means less scrutiny of Facebook and IG trends, and less insight into what’s gaining traction at any given time. And that, in social media marketing terms, is a big negative, and CrowdTangle will be a significant loss for many looking to stay ahead of the curve, and provide in-depth analysis of Page performance.
But it is going. Right now, CrowdTangle displays a message noting that August 14th will be its last day of operation, which means that tomorrow is effectively its final day of existence.
It’s annoying to lose such a valuable tool, but it just means that social media folk have to get a little smarter with the tools they do still have available.
