Facebook buys social media content tracking startup CrowdTangle

Facebook has bought four year old startup CrowdTangle, that specializes in tracking how content is spread around the web.

Though, CrowdTangle confirmed the acquisition in a message on its website, but neither company has disclosed financial terms of the deal. CrowdTangle is known to provide real-time pulse of the web by developing an enormous but hidden influence on the stories you see popping up in your news feeds throughout the day.

According to Facebook, “publishers around the world turn to CrowdTangle to surface stories that matter, measure their social performance, and identify influencers. We are excited to work with CrowdTangle to deliver these and more insights to more publishers.”

The purchase hints at Zuckerberg’s company trying to attract publishers amidst uncertainty about how to build sustainable, profitable businesses when most news is consumed on platforms that publishers don’t own.

Facebook says it will continue to invest in and operate the service so that more publishers could take advantage of it. CrowdTangle’s small, distributed team, which had raised about $2.2 million from investors including Betaworks, will continue to lead development of the product.

“Thanks to this partnership, our platform is only going to get more powerful,” CrowdTangle’s founders said in a blog post. “All of our partners can not only expect the same quality of product, level of support, and pace of innovation they have come to expect from us, but they should and can expect even more from us going forward.”

The list of users at CrowdTangle includes Google, BuzzFeed, Vox, the British BBC, RTL Group in Luxembourg, and Switzerland-based media group Ringier. The tool is also used by nonprofit groups such as Greenpeace and Unicef, according to its website.