A CrowdTangle replacement you can set up this afternoon

If you are looking for a CrowdTangle replacement, the first thing to accept is that the old tool is not coming back. Meta's own page states that CrowdTangle stopped being available on August 14, 2024. What you can rebuild is the habit it supported: a list of things you watched, and a quick way to see when something new happened. This guide shows how to rebuild that habit in AyeWatch, step by step, and where the result will differ from what you had.

Before you start: what carries over and what does not

CrowdTangle was built around Meta's platforms. Its strength was public Facebook and Instagram content with engagement numbers attached. AyeWatch works differently. It watches internet topics you describe in a sentence, specific web pages, and accounts or searches on X, Reddit, YouTube, LinkedIn, Instagram and TikTok. It does not cover Facebook, and it does not report likes, shares or reach.

So a fair expectation is this: the "tell me when something new appears about X" part carries over well. The "rank posts by interactions" part does not. If your work depends on Facebook data for research, Meta Content Library is the official route, but only for researchers at academic or nonprofit institutions who pass a review.

Step 1: write down what you used to watch

Open whatever notes you kept from CrowdTangle days. Most people had three kinds of setups:

• Lists of accounts, such as local news pages or official agencies.
• Saved searches on a keyword, a hashtag or a link.
• A beat, such as "health claims in our region", that you checked every morning across several lists.

Write each one as a single line. You do not need an export file. AyeWatch needs only a description, so a list on paper is enough.

Step 2: turn each beat into one plain-English monitor

In AyeWatch, pick an Internet monitor and describe the beat the way you would explain it to a new colleague. For example:

• "New claims that the city water supply is unsafe, on Instagram, X and TikTok"
• "Statements from the regional health agency about vaccine supply"

AyeWatch reads new items and judges them by meaning, not by whether a keyword appears. That is why one sentence can replace a long list of keywords and exclusions.

Step 3: add a rule for what should trigger an alert

The rule is where you cut noise. A useful pattern from the AyeWatch write-up on this topic is: alert on new claims and on official corrections, and skip reposts of claims you have already seen. Rules like that are hard to express in a keyword query but easy to write as a sentence.

Step 4: add account and page monitors

For the account lists, use platform monitors. AyeWatch can watch X profiles, communities and searches, subreddits and Reddit users, YouTube channels, LinkedIn company and person posts, Instagram searches and hashtags, and TikTok profiles. Each one takes a plain-English filter, so you only hear about the posts that match.

For official pages, such as an agency's press release page, use a Webpages monitor and paste the URL. You will get an alert when the content changes in a meaningful way.

Step 5: choose the speed and the channels

Paid plans start at $9 a month. Auto mode sets the pace per topic, faster while a story is moving and slower when it goes quiet, or you can pick a custom interval yourself.

Every plan delivers alerts to the feed and as push notifications on web, iOS and Android. Paid plans add email, a daily digest email, Slack, Discord, signed webhooks and a REST API. You choose the channels per topic, so a breaking-news monitor can go to Slack while a slow research topic goes to the digest.

Step 6: check the morning digest instead of a dashboard

The daily digest collects the day's developments into one dated, numbered summary. For many people this replaces the morning tab they used to keep open in CrowdTangle. Each alert includes a short summary and links to its sources, so you can verify before you report.

What you give up

Be clear with your team about the gaps. There is no Facebook coverage, no engagement or reach metrics, and no historical CrowdTangle exports. If a story depends on comparing interaction counts across Facebook pages, AyeWatch is the wrong tool for that part of the job.

Try it on one beat first

The Free Preview gives three monitoring runs with no credit card. Start with your busiest beat, compare a week of alerts with how you work now, and then move the rest. The full AyeWatch vs CrowdTangle comparison has the feature table if you need it for a team decision.