Facebook (Now Meta) Might Kill Its Social Media Tracker CrowdTangle

CrowdTangle will slowly fade into the crowd – exactly as Meta (formerly Facebook) planned it to be. It was a useful tool to find out insights about Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. The tool was so useful that Meta bought it back in 2016 and improved it for some time. Now, it plans to retire CrowdTangle for good. But journalists and analysts don’t want that.

CrowdTangle’s insights were handy in determining audience interests across platforms. Moreover, it was an effective tool to identify the spread of misinformation and then report it to Facebook and other platforms.

No More CrowdTangle?

Bloomberg reported that Meta has removed most of the development support from CrowdTangle. This is a sign that Meta wants the tool to be retired permanently. Meta was on track to kill the tool but deviated off the course for a bit due to the EU DSA rules. Meta hasn’t given any official statement about why they want to retire a public insight tool that many journalists and analysts need.

If you are curious about what data does CrowdTangle track, here is a simple explanation. It helps to analyze public accounts and groups and track engagement data on the content produced by them. Researchers and Journalists can easily scour for emerging trends by analyzing the data produced by the tool.

It is clear that CrowdTangle can track public groups and accounts of influential people. But the tool limits what a user can track. Private Facebook Groups, private Instagram accounts, and Facebook Personal Profiles are a strict no at CrowdTangle. It also doesn’t measure revenue, impressions, reach, unfollows, and a few other metrics.

U.S. midterm elections are around the corner and CrowdTangle is a necessary tool to combat misinformation. According to The Verge, a company spokesperson revealed to Bloomberg that the tool would stay till the midterm election are over. Moreover, the source claimed Meta has plans to provide “even more valuable” tools for researchers.