Recent updates and changes

A running list of product updates and changes.

T
Written by Tess
Updated over a week ago

July 2023

  • Twitter announced the deprecation of their API to certain access tiers, which resulted in CrowdTangle losing access and the ability to serve Twitter data. You can find more information here.

  • Reddit announced changes to their API, which resulted in CrowdTangle losing access and the ability to serve Reddit data. You can find more information here and here.

October 2021

  • IGTV and feed videos are being combined into one format—Instagram Video. Following the Instagram announcement, new long-form videos (formerly called IGTV) will show up as Instagram Videos in CrowdTangle. This change is effective October 8th. IGTV posts posted before the change will be migrated to the Instagram Video (post type) over the next month.

June 2021

  • Adding the ability to filter searches by Page Category. With our new Page Category filter you can choose to include or exclude Facebook Pages in Search by selecting from 2,500+ categories that Page admins have selected as being relevant to their page. Categories include everything from sports, bands and news/media, to Japanese restaurants, art galleries and comedians. See the full list of categories here.

    Categories are self-selected by the Page’s admins. This means Page categories are not verified by a third party and are determined by are up to the Page admins themselves. This is currently available in the API and all .CSV downloads. Read our FAQ for more information here.

  • Hiding like counts and video views on accounts that choose to hide them. As recently announced, Instagram users are now given the option to hide like counts and video view counts on their own posts. If enabled on the post, like counts and video view counts will be unavailable in CrowdTangle, including in Intelligence. Facebook Pages aren't impacted by this.

  • You can now save your search in CrowdTangle Search. Easily access all your most common searches and return again and again without recreating from scratch.

    Here’s how you do it:

    1. Put in your keywords, modify your filters and hit enter to get your results.

    2. Select the save icon on the upper right of the screen.

    3. Give your search a name and add a description if you like.

    4. Click on the search under My Saved Searches to return to it whenever you want!

    5. You can also easily share your searches with colleagues by using the Share button next to the search bar and copying the unique link. Check out our FAQ for more info.

April 2021

  • You can now sort your CrowdTangle Search results by Facebook Reactions.

    Want to know things like the Covid-19 posts with the most Care reactions, the science content with the most Wows or the awards show photos with most Loves? Head over to CrowdTangle Search, fill in your keywords, sort by “Most Reactions” and then pick a reaction from the menu that appears.

  • New Fields Added to API. We added more fields to our API, matching recent additions to our CSVs. We've added new fields including: 'pageCategory,' 'pageDescription,' and 'pageCreated (DateTime).' These fields are also available on the sponsor object of branded content.

March 2021

  • New Fields Added to CSVs. We are adding more information to our CSVs to make them more useful. We've added new columns including: 'Page Category,' 'Page Admin Top Country,' 'Page Description,' 'Page Created' and 'Is Video Owner?'. We've split the 'Post Created' column into 'Post Date' and 'Post Time.' And we've moved 'Total Interactions' so it's now closer to other columns breaking down interaction types. With new fields being added, old fields may have shifted as a result. If you're using macros, you may need to make adjustments.

  • UPDATE [4/12]: We've now added these as new fields into our API as well.

  • CrowdTangle now tracks all public Instagram accounts and Facebook Pages with more than 50k followers. We've been working to increase our coverage of the Pages and accounts we have in our database. Previously, our threshold was 100k followers. Now we have all public Pages and accounts with more than 50k. Check out our article What Data Is CrowdTangle Tracking to see our full coverage across different thresholds. The numbers are updated monthly.

  • An update to how we categorize scheduled live posts. In the past, when a Page created a post letting users know about an upcoming live video we put those posts under ‘Facebook Live’. Going forward, these scheduled live Facebook posts will now be categorized as a ‘status’ when filtering by post type. When the Live itself begins, that video post will still be considered a ‘Facebook Live.'

February 2021

  • Auto-conversion of Zawgyi encoded Burmese. We are now storing all our Burmese language posts in Unicode. As well, we auto-detect Zawgyi encoded Burmese search terms and convert them to Unicode to reduce false negatives.

  • New Export CSV Controls in Search. You now have more control over what your CSVs look like when you export them from Search. Set a limit on your results with a max of 300k results, and choose the number format and delimiter that works best for you.

January 2021

Product Updates:

  • Now Measuring Facebook Page Followers. CrowdTangle is introducing Followers as the primary way to measure a Facebook Page’s audience. Facebook recently introduced a new Pages experience, which removes Page Likes from the platform to focus on Followers. Unlike Likes, Followers of a Page represent the people who can receive updates from Pages, and is a stronger indicator of a Page's fanbase. As a result, CrowdTangle will now default to Followers in our system across Intelligence, Leaderboards, API, and elsewhere. You’ll still be able to see historical information on Page Likes, however. Go to Intelligence, select the Followers tab, and you can look at either Page Likes or followers. Read our FAQ for more information including what this means for the API.

  • CSV Downloads for URL searches. You can now download your results after searching for a link in CrowdTangle Search. You can find the CSV download button next to the filter dropdown.

  • API Post ID Naming Update. We have switched to a new format for CrowdTangle Post IDs in our API. We have always stored two different IDs: our internal CrowdTangle Post ID, and the ID that the actual platform (Facebook, Instagram, Reddit) uses (platformExternalId). Now, the new format is derived directly from those platformExternalIds. If you use Post IDs from our API, learn what you need to do to update your API tools here.

  • See Who Shared This Link. We've added the ability to easily see who else shared a link on Facebook within CrowdTangle Search. Just click on the drop down of a post and see all other public posts in our database that also have that link post.

August 2020

Upgrades to the CrowdTangle API. We've completed a major API upgrade, and added new features including...

New endpoint settings:

  • Boolean search is now available in the /posts/search API endpoint when using the SearchTerm parameter.

  • The hitCount setting allows you to estimate how many posts will be returned. With hitCount activated, if you set count = 0 for any query in /posts and /posts/search, you will receive a hitCount object in the response that shares the number of posts you should expect for the query.

New account objects:

  • accountType functions for Facebook entities only, but reveals whether the account is a Page, Group, or Verified Profile.

  • pageAdminTopCountry reveals the country of the plurality of Page administrators.

New parameters:

  • pageAdminTopCountry allows you to filter by the country of the plurality of page admins (identical to Country filter in the UI).

  • Verified allows you to either include, exclude, or search only for verified pages.

  • brandedContent allows you to filter for Branded Content by market, by publisher, or to exclude Branded Content.

  • accountTypes allows you to filter in /posts/search for only Pages, only Groups, or only Verified Profiles.

  • searchField now appears in /links in addition to /posts/search, and allows you to search through query links using this endpoint when setting searchField=Include_query_strings.

Lastly, you can now match the titles of CSV downloads to API object names for faster processing. Please email support@crowdtangle.com to request activation of this feature.

Please fill out this form to request activation of Boolean search or hitCount, as well as any rate limit increases. See full API documentation here.

June 2020

🙌 Product Releases

  • Discover top posts in Search. We've made it easy to discover top posts across Facebook, Instagram and Reddit. You’ll now be able to identify the best performing content across platforms, countries, languages, post types and more without inputting a search term or looking for anything in particular. Here's how to use it:

Here’s how to use it. It’s Search, but without needing to input a keyword or URL...

  1. Open CrowdTangle Search

  2. Change your filters, but leave the search bar empty

  3. Watch your results change with each modification of your filters. That’s it!

  • Search Within a Page. We’ve added a new filter to make it easy to search or discover top posts within a single Page or account. Simply click Pages and find the page you want to search in. Put in a keyword or URL to search for a specific

  • Search Within Your Lists. We’ve imported your lists to Search. Click on the ‘Lists’ filter and find all the custom lists you or your colleagues have made in dashboards. Search within those lists or set filters to discover what’s performing best.

  • We’ve added Facebook’s new ‘Care’ reaction. You can now see it broken out amongst other reactions when downloading CSVs or if you’re using the API. You’ll also see it when adjusting dashboard weights, in Intelligence and when you hover over a post in your dashboard.

Product Updates

May 2020 

🙌 Product Releases 

  • Interactions Per Post: We added another metric to Intelligence -- Interactions Per Post --  to make it easier and more intuitive to measure the ROI of your post strategy using CrowdTangle. In addition to grabbing the overall interactions per post for a Page/account or list of Pages/accounts over a given set of time, we’ve made it simple to narrow in on specific interactions and post types as well. Simply select those options on the right rail and you’re all set! Read the full FAQ here.

April 2020

🙌 Product Releases 

  • Export CSVs in Search. You can now export data from your CrowdTangle Search results. Search for a keyword and then hit the download button in the upper right corner of your results to then download a CSV of all the results. Additionally, you can download CSV data on the post level as well by selecting the drop down on the post within Search. 

March 2020

🙌 Product Releases 

  • Easily invite your team to CrowdTangle Search. You can now invite anyone on your team to use CrowdTangle Search without needing them to set up a new dashboard. Just go to your settings in the top right of Search, then give them the link you created. They should be able to access it right away without needing to set up a dashboard. 

  • New branded content toggle on lists in dashboards. You can now view all branded content within a list whether they’re the marketer paying for the branded content, or publishing the branded content themselves. Just switch on the toggle and select between marketer or publisher.

  • COVID-19 Live Display Hub. We build over 100 publicly available Live Displays tracking mentions of the virus around the world. There are more than 100 Live Displays, tracking content in more than 50 countries and all 50 US states (as well as Puerto Rico and DC). All displays are available to everyone, beyond just CrowdTangle users, and track public content from local news outlets, elected officials, health ministries and more. Access the hub here and read how we built them.

  • 🍾🍾 CrowdTangle Search! 🍾🍾CrowdTangle Search makes it easier than ever to search across social media. Use this tool to search for keywords and URLs, and get greater insight into how certain topics and events are being discussed across Facebook, Instagram, Reddit and Twitter. Access it here and then read more about in our FAQ.

February 2020

🙌 Product Releases 

  • Filter by Country and Language Now Available in Notifications and Live Displays. When building Live Displays or creating Notifications you now have the option to filter by both country and language. To filter post results in a Live Display, click on the gear icon to access your post filters, and select the country and language at the bottom. In Notifications, you can find the same filters by clicking on advanced options. Note: Country filters is only available for Facebook Pages, and not Facebook Groups or Instagram accounts. Also, when you include a search, the feed will respect the country or language setting of the search unless you choose to override with these new settings.

December 2019

Product Updates

  • Updating How We Calculate Total Facebook Comments. As of December 23rd, we will be updating how we calculate total Facebook comments to include replies. Prior to this change, CrowdTangle included top-line comments in the total number. All other metrics across platforms will stay the same. We will be updating all historical posts in the CrowdTangle database to reflect this new number. [Update: As of January 2020, the historical update is complete.]

October 2019

🙌 Product Releases 

  • Instagram Follower Graphs in Intelligence. We’ve added three new ways to analyze and visualize Instagram follower counts in Intelligence. Under the Followers tab, rather than just see the total number of followers, you can now see how growth is fluctuating day to day, the rate at which you’re growing, and how your account has grown historically. These three new graphs will help give you a more granular view for how well your account is attracting new followers. Read our FAQ. 

  • Link Search [Beta].  We’ve replaced ‘Link Checker’ — where you could place a URL into CrowdTangle and see who has posted about that URL — with a new surface that mirrors the Chrome Extension functionality. The product is currently in beta and it will evolve over the coming months. Read our FAQ. 

September 2019

Product Updates

  • Twitter has been disabled on CrowdTangle (September 30). Twitter dashboards have been removed, as has Twitter data in Intelligence and Live Displays. You can still access the most recent 7 days worth of Tweets within the CrowdTangle Chrome Extension. You can also find Twitter analytics tools at media.twitter.com.

🙌 Product Releases

CrowdTangle Chrome Extension V3.0 (September 26): We've released an updated version of our Chrome Extension. Updates include: 

  • We will now be sorting out referrals by each platform. You will see tabs for Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and Reddit.

  • Twitter data will appear significantly faster than before. Lag time should be no more than a few minutes between what appears on Twitter and what is shown in the Chrome Extension.

  • Twitter data now be limited to the past 7 days of Tweets.

  • Tweets will be surfaced from all public accounts on Twitter instead of just the limited set of partners within the CrowdTangle database. However, Twitter does not guarantee that every single Tweet will be surfaced every time.

  • You will need to log into Twitter from the Chrome Extension to view Twitter data.

  • Currently, the Chrome Extension does not surface short link referrals on Twitter. However, we are actively looking into a solution for this.

  • IGTV in CrowdTangle (September 12): You can now view IGTV data across lists, searches, live displays, intelligence, and email notifications. Read more in our FAQ here.

  • Filter Facebook Posts by country (9/5): We’ve added the ability to filter posts by country in lists and searches. This will give you the ability to create saved searches by country, see what content is overperforming in various regions, and more. When looking at the post stream within lists or searches, select ‘more,’ scroll down to country, and select the country you’d like to filter by. Read the FAQ.

  • 'Pages Breakdown' for lists in Intelligence: Intelligence now shows you a breakdown of every single Page from a list within the ‘Pages Breakdown,’ and allows you to select up to 20 Pages you’d like to compare.

August 2019

🙌 Product Releases 

  • 'Posts with this video' Feature (8/22). You can now easily see what other posts include the same uploaded video across Pages and public groups, as long as they are in the CrowdTangle database. This lets you view when and where the original video was posted, who crossposted it, and others that shared it. To access this, click on ‘Video’ at the top of a post. The different posts with the same video are then labeled as ‘Owned’ ‘Share’ or ‘Crosspost’ along with the view count from each individual post. You can also download this info into a CSV. Learn more here.

July 2019

🙌 Product Releases 

  • Facebook Premieres and Scheduled Lives (7/29). Premieres and Scheduled Facebook Live posts will be tracked properly w/ interaction and video view data. Older posts (that may have been missing) have been added and updated. For now, we aren't tagging them as Premieres nor are we treating them as a different post type with their own benchmarks. A Premiere is a Facebook Video and a Scheduled Live is a Facebook Live. In most cases, you shouldn't expect us to capture the status post that preempts a Premiere and Scheduled Live.

  • Video Length property added to API endpoint (7/11). Posts object will have video length as field, recorded in milliseconds. 

  • Hot Link to Facebook Ad Library (7/17). There is now a hotlink to see active ads for that Facebook Page. 

May 2019

🙌 Product Releases 

  • Intelligence Large Reports (5/7). The limit on Intelligence reports has been increased from 10 to 20 pages/accounts.

April 2019

🙌 Product Releases 

  • Star your favorite lists (4/10). Favorites will appear at the top of each List, Saved Search, Saved Post sections inside your shared dashboards. These favorites are private to you, only you will see them. 

  • Add Branded Content filter (“as publisher”, “as marketer”) to Intelligence for Facebook and Instagram (4/3) You can now look up engagement metrics over time for a specific account or multiple accounts and compare against each other. This is the same data that was already available in the leaderboard, we're just bringing it into Intelligence.

  • Add Branded Content leaderboard email option (4/3) This matches 1:1 to our current Branded Content leaderboard, and is just in email form so people can receive it in scheduled format like any of our other notifications

  • Add a leaderboard (“as publisher”, “as marketer”) that rolls up Branded Content post data on the account level in Page Details (4/3) This is the same data that was already available within our tool, we're just taking out a few clicks to simplify a common use case.

  • Add additional metrics to our Branded Content leaderboards (4/3) This is data we already have in our system, we're just doing some math in a standardized fashion to simplify the process for partners. Metrics include: % of Video Views on Branded Posts, % of Video Posts on Branded Posts and Interactions Per Branded Video. 

March 2019

🙌 Product Releases

  • Facebook Non-Live post type (3/21)
    You can now filter for Facebook videos but exclude Facebook Live videos via the Facebook Non-Live post type. 

  • Video Length available on all Facebook videos across all major surfaces (3/21)
    View video length on any post and filter the post stream by video length via a slider (ie. posts over 3 minutes) and sort by interactions or overperforming.

In Intelligence, you can view video views and video count by video length and total video time. In the Owned Video Leaderboard, see total view time, plus the total number of — and percentage of — 3+ min videos (in hover and export) at the page-level. As well, you can now export video length data from the post stream, leaderboard and historical data. 

Read more about video length here.

  • Set Filter By default setting (3/1)
    In Dashboard Settings, you can now set the dashboard to default to Total Interactions, Most Recent, Underperforming, or Interaction Rate. Before Overperforming was always the default unless you sat a default on a list.

February 2019

🙌 Product Releases

  • Add Instagram Branded Content (2/14)
    You can how search and filter for Instagram Branded Content just like in a Facebook dashboard. This data is also available in leaderboard form. See article for more information.

  • Add Albums as Post Type to Intelligence (2/14)

  • Instagram Albums filter-able in Live Displays (2/6)

  • Add "Marked as Breaking" filter for Viral Alerts (2/6)You can receive viral alerts (via email or Slack) for Facebook posts that are "marked as breaking" which is also available in Live Displays and Dashboard streams. 

January 2019

🙌 Product Releases

  • Instagram Albums filter-able in dashboard streams (1/29)
    You can filter for Instagram album posts from a dashboard stream. 

  • Instagram Albums as a post type in Leaderboards (1/24)
    Album posts are listed as post type alongside photos and videos in Leaderboard tooltips and CSV downloads.

  • Slack Integration
    We replaced the cumbersome Slack integration using webhooks with a simple "Add To Slack" button using our official Slack App. Learn more here

  • Instagram Albums as a post type in Dashboard streams
    We now support the Instagram Album post type. Long time coming! It is not yet filterable but you can know see all the images and videos in a native-like carousel format. In the coming weeks, we will be making it a first-class post type along side video and album post types. 

December 2018

🙌 Product Releases

  • Adding Pages, Groups, and Accounts to Intelligence
    You no longer need to add a Page, Account, or Group to an existing List in one of your Dashboards in order to pull it into an Intelligence graph!  Now when you use the Intelligence search bar to find a Page, Account, or Group a message that says "Not seeing what you're looking for?" will pop up.  If you click on it, it will show you Pages/Accounts/Groups that are not yet in the CrowdTangle database- each with the word "Add" next to them.  Clicking on "Add" will add it to the database and the Intelligence graph.  Note- Facebook Verified Profiles still need to be added to a LIst in one of your dashboards before being added to an Intelligence graph.  It also may take several minutes for historical data to show up.  You can read more about it here.
    ​ 

October 2018

🙌 Product Releases

  • Explore Section Enhancements
    The Explore Section in each of your Facebook, Instagram, and Reddit Dashboards has been improved!  You can now filter Lists by tags and browse by more useful categories (including new ones like Social Issues and Communities).  Explore Lists added to your own Lists will now updated automatically when CrowdTangle updates them.  Explore Lists can now also automatically be accessed in Intelligence or Saved Searches without having added them to your own Lists first.  Finally, Account Owners can now publish custom Lists- making them available to all of their Account's users in the Explore section.  Learn more here.

September 2018

🙌 Product Releases

  • Mark As False News Experiment
    As a part of Facebook's continuing efforts to battle false news on the platform, you can now identify link posts as false in your CrowdTangle Facebook dashboards.  We're currently testing the validity of this as a signal for our misinformation team!  You can read more about the feature here.

June 2018

🙌 Product Releases

  • Intelligence for Lists
    You can now add Lists to an Intelligence graph as long as the List has no more than 500 Pages, Profiles, accounts, or subreddits in it.   

  • Facebook Verified Profiles
    CrowdTangle can now track Verified Facebook Profiles that have been set to allow anyone to Follow them.  These can be added to Lists, Intelligence graphs, Searches, and Leaderboards in the same way you add Facebook Pages.
    ​ 

April 2018

🙌 Product Releases

  • New Top Level Navigation
    You can now access Live Displays and Intelligence by navigating to the top of CrowdTangle in your browser.  Additionally, the Live Display drop down now shows you "Featured Live Displays"- public Live Displays created for you by CrowdTangle- and any recently visited Live Displays of your own.  The Intelligence drop down will also allow quick access to your saved reports.

📋 New Explore Lists Available

  • Travel Influencers (IG): Updated from 200 to 456 accounts

  • Wellness Influencers (IG): New

  • Beauty Influencers (IG): Updated from 150 to 201 accounts

  • Fitness Stars (IG): Updated from 50 to 96 accounts

  • Music Photographers (IG): New 

  • Mexico Elections (FB) New

📺 Live Displays

 
🐞 Bugs Squished!

  • Fixed a bug causing some Instagram unverified users to occasionally show as verified

  • Fixed a permissions bug that was sometimes interfering with cloning Dashboards

  • Fixed Chinese filters on post stream

  • Fixed a bug that was negatively impacting Saved Search performance

  • Fixed a bug that would occasionally cause custom date range searches to take much longer than expected 

March 2018

🙌 Product Releases

  • Date Comparisons in Intelligence                            
    You can now compare a single account/page over multiple time frames and multiple accounts/pages over different time frames

FEBRUARY 2018 

🙌 Product Releases

  • Intelligence Reaction Type Breakdown
    Intelligence will now allow you to filter by specific reaction types in the Interaction Types filter on the right hand side.

📋 New Explore lists Available

  • Fashion Week Beauty Teams (Instagram)

  • West Midlands MPs  (Facebook)

  • Scotland MPs  (Facebook)

  • Scotland MSPs  (Facebook)

  • West Midlands emergency services  (Facebook)

  • West Midlands news and media (Facebook)

  • Scotland news and media (Facebook)

  • Scotland emergency services (Facebook)

  • Politics (Italy)  (Facebook)

📺 Live Displays

🐞 Bugs Squished!

  • Fixed an issue in Link Checker and the Chrome Extension where searches would sometimes miss original links.

JANUARY 2018

🙌 Product Releases

  • Leaderboards Interaction Type Breakdown
    Leaderboards will now break down the total interactions value by interaction type, as well as post type when you mouse over the total interaction number.  That includes comments, shares, and reactions.  Show Me

  • New Leaderboards for Comments, Shares, and Reactions
    You can now create Leaderboards specifically for comments, shares, and reactions by clicking on the Post Type drop down while viewing a Leaderboard.  Show Me

  • Pending Dashboard Requests
    You can now see and manage outstanding requests to access your dashboards under Account Settings ➡️Users.  Show Me

  • PDF Exports in Intelligence
    You can now export Intelligence Reports as a single PDF or CSV form.  (Previously Intelligence reports would export as a separate CSV for each page tracked). Show Me

  • Enable View Count
    You can now leverage the CrowdTangle API to get view count from Facebook and Instagram.

  • Recently Viewed Dashboards
    When logging in, CrowdTangle will now show you a list of your most recently viewed dashboards to make it easier to get to your favorite dashboards quickly. Show Me

  • Saved Searches: Query String Toggle
    Previously, search would default to searching within a post's query string.  Saved Searches now ignore query strings by default.  This can be toggled by checking the "Include Query Strings" box under "More Search Options".  For more information click here.  Show Me

  • Archived Dashboards
    Dashboards that haven't been accessed for six months or more are now automatically moved to an archive and removed from the list of dashboards seen upon login.  The dashboards can be removed from the archive by going to Account Settings ➡️Dashboards. Show Me

📋 New Explore lists available

  • PyeongChang Winter Athletes (FB, TW, IG)

  • PyeongChang Winter NGBs (FB, TW, IG)

  • PyeongChang Winter IOCs (FB, TW, IG)

  • PyeongChang Winter Official Partners (FB, TW, IG)

  • Grammys 2018 - Nominees (FB, IG)

  • Grammys 2018 - Performers (FB, IG)

  • Grammys 2018 - Presenters (FB, IG)

  • Glam Squad (IG)

  • Carnival Street Groups (FB)

  • Carnival Drum Queens (FB)

📺 Live Displays

🐞 Bugs Squished!

  • Fixed an issue where people signing up were occasionally being bounced to the lock screen

  • Downloaded saved posts will now download the whole set when set to "my order"

  • Fixed an issue where downloading saved post lists from an Instagram dashboard would set the video views to 0

  • Fixed an issue where viral alerts and referral alerts would disregard language settings for lists

  • Fixed an issue where Leaderboards would show NaN (Not a Number) instead of a percentage if the number of posts it was considering exceeded 1000

  • Fixed an issue where Live Display titles would occasionally stop updating and graphs would sometimes show up when they shouldn't

  • Slack messages for groups should now display the correct URLs

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