With CrowdTangle being deprecated in August 2024, many newsrooms are seeking an alternative for their social media news gathering, multichannel audience development, competitive benchmarking and developing ideas from social media trends.
I recently spoke to Chris Miles, the former Head of Strategy and strategic partnerships lead at CrowdTangle, as well as many top newsroom executives. Here’s a synthesis of the key competences newsrooms should seek in their replacement technology.
1. Blazing Speed
Newsrooms want to be competitive to detect interesting breaking stories and social discussion, as well as being at the forefront of cultural moments and references. When the news is breaking right now, journalists need to feel confident they have the very latest information before writing up or chasing down a story further.
NewsWhip provides users with the fastest content discovery engine in the world, with content discovered within as little as 90 seconds from publication, giving users the most real-time view of the social landscape on the market.
2. Real-time metrics to separate what’s important
Real-time discovery is one piece of the pie, but newsrooms also need to understand which stories and posts their audiences will find interesting.
We know that users love CrowdTangle’s overperforming metric, which showed which posts were overperforming compared to the levels expected for a normal post on that Page, and they want to make sure that new platforms have that same functionality.
NewsWhip has its own version of overperforming, as well as velocity metrics and predicted interactions, so you can see what’s expected to overperform in a number of different ways, according to your priorities.
Our breakdown by reaction data also allows you to get a sense for how a post makes people feel in real time, by measuring Angry reactions against Wows, Hahas, Sads, and more.
3. Wide, cross-platform coverage including TikTok, LinkedIn, and Instagram
Though it is still a big factor, it’s not just about traffic from Facebook anymore. Successful audience development now requires data in aggregate for all of their accounts, across the social web. This includes account-level data as well as post-level data for as many platforms as possible. It takes work, but if you’re active across platforms — a tool like NewsWhip will help you organize and maximize that work.
NewsWhip coverage includes the full Reddit firehose, Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, X, and Facebook, as well as a unique LinkedIn integration that’s currently in beta for our publisher partners.
4. Workflow integrations
No one wants to learn a new app, or to spend their whole day in a dashboard.
The ability to quickly share insights around a newsroom in an easily-digestible way is crucial to maximizing success. Tooling that is simple and fast. Data that helps spotlight opportunities — editorial and business — for publishers to lean in on.
NewsWhip has a variety of options to make distribution of insights easier and faster, including AI Digests, Slack and MS Teams integrations, real-time alerts, and more. We’ve just upgraded our mobile experience to make it easy to research a story while you’re on the go.
5. Easy to use
Other social listening platforms are built for people with a lot of time on their hands, and a deep and specific research project. On those platforms, it’s hard to quickly spot stories and immediately see how they are doing cross platform.
Replacement tech must not only find, but also present insights fast, and enable users to quickly research a breaking news topic on the fly.
NewsWhip offers users one of the easiest to use platforms out there, but you don’t need to take our word for it. Just go check out what our users say about us.
6. Newsroom-tailored support
A big challenge we know many users face is carrying over searches, lists, and sources from the tools they currently use, as well as making sure your new team members will be trained on any new functionality.
Journalists want a service that understands newsrooms, and can help with the porting challenge. They want a team that knows newsgathering and audience development priorities, not one where they are an afterthought.
NewsWhip was built for newsrooms and works with some of the biggest outlets in the world. Our team has deep experience in newsroom workflow, so whatever you need from a tool, we can help you find it.
What to do next?
My conversation with Chris uncovered the key considerations for any team moving from CrowdTangle, and I was pleased to see that NewsWhip is well placed to address each of them.
One last piece of good news: for anyone considering bringing new technology into their newsroom today, the NewsWhip team is offering discounts for former CrowdTangle users – email ct@newswhip.com.
Or if you’d like to learn more about how NewsWhip can help you continue and expand the work you’re doing on CrowdTangle, head to this page.
