In June, we announced the beta of Currents, a new product that shows the collective interests of over 1 billion people each month by connecting audience attention data to the content of online articles.

It has been a fruitful few months, and today we’re pleased to share that Currents is now available for anyone to use.

A tool for transparency

We’ve learned a lot over the course of this beta. One common theme kept emerging in our talks with beta users: Currents makes the flow of attention online more transparent.

Sean Haspel, a Media Analyst for New Orleans’ NBA and NFL teams, uses Currents in his daily reporting. “Currents has allowed us to get a larger view of the sports ecosystem. It condenses this wide range of content across the web and distills it into one searchable, sortable, easy-to-digest place. It saves me a ton of time,” he said.

Travis Bernard, Director of Audience Development at TechCrunch, echoed this sentiment: “Google Trends and CrowdTangle are great ways to see what’s popular, but the problem is that neither platform offers a glimpse into what’s happening outside the walled gardens of Google and Facebook. Currents can see beyond the walled garden, and that’s one of the most compelling reasons to use it.”

Free for anyone to use, forever

We believe that rich, detailed insight into how audiences spend their time online should not be the sole privilege of the world’s largest tech companies. That’s why we’re making a free version of Currents available for anyone to use. Sign up right now to start seeing attention patterns over the last week, no credit card required.

If you’re using Currents for work and want more days of data and fuller functionality, we offer paid plans starting at $99 a month.

You can switch plans on the Settings page. The Parse.ly Analytics customers who make up our network will get free access to the Pro plan for the next one year.

Getting started

Here’s what you should check out first to get familiar with Currents:

Stories

A Story is a group of articles about a single event or issue.  For instance, in Currents you can see a few Stories about Brett Kavanaugh: Dianne Feinstein’s possession of a letter accusing Kavanaugh of sexual misconduct and the accuser Christine Blasey Ford coming forward publicly. The attention paid to these stories feeds into the overall attention to Kavanaugh.

Alerts

Want to know the next time people begin paying attention to a new story about  Meghan Markle?  iPhones? Your favorite sports team? Save a topic you care about or add it to a collection…

…and you’ll receive an email when  attention spikes for a story about that topic.

Attention patterns over time

Dig into historical trends to spot patterns in how online attention shifts.

As always, we want to know what you think! Send your feedback and suggestions to currents@parsely.com.