poppr
A population-genetics workhorse in long-term maintenance, shipping only what CRAN demands.
A side-by-side editorial comparison of rfacebookstat and verbalisr — release velocity, themes, recent moves, and the top alternatives to consider.
A Facebook Marketing API client for R whose release schedule belongs to Meta, not its author.
rfacebookstat wraps the Facebook Marketing API for R analysts, and nearly every release is a migration to a newer API version — v14, v15, v16, v19, v20 all appear in this window. Feature work rides along with those migrations: fbGetAdAccounts() gained a spend_cap field, and fbGetMarketingStat() gained use_unified_attribution_setting, which switches results to the ad-set-level attribution settings and overrides the older account-level argument.
Turns pedigree relationships into readable sentences, and is now tuning how those sentences read.
verbalisr describes the relationship between two people in a pedigree in plain language, and sits inside the pedsuite family alongside pedtools and ribd. The recent arc is about output control rather than new analysis: 0.6.0 added a simplify option for lineal and avuncular descriptions, 0.7.1 added abbreviate and collapse formatting arguments, and 0.7.2 made relationships with many paths noticeably faster.
rfacebookstat wraps the Facebook Marketing API for R analysts, and nearly every release is a migration to a newer API version — v14, v15, v16, v19, v20 all appear in this window. Feature work rides along with those migrations: fbGetAdAccounts() gained a spend_cap field, and fbGetMarketingStat() gained use_unified_attribution_setting, which switches results to the ad-set-level attribution settings and overrides the older account-level argument.
The package's direction is set almost entirely by Meta's deprecation cycle, and the release notes read as a log of keeping up. The attribution work is the one strand with its own logic: an argument added in 2.10.0, then fixed in 2.12.1 when it turned out not to apply unless fetch_by was also used. Three versions cut within four and a half hours on one day in April 2023 show migrations being cleared in batches rather than steadily.
The next release will almost certainly be a migration to a newer Marketing API version, since that has triggered every version in this history; whether anything else ships with it depends on what Meta changes.
verbalisr describes the relationship between two people in a pedigree in plain language, and sits inside the pedsuite family alongside pedtools and ribd. The recent arc is about output control rather than new analysis: 0.6.0 added a simplify option for lineal and avuncular descriptions, 0.7.1 added abbreviate and collapse formatting arguments, and 0.7.2 made relationships with many paths noticeably faster.
The package has moved from getting the descriptions correct to making them presentable and cheap to compute. Every recent release pins a newer pedtools, so its version cadence is tied to the wider pedsuite rather than to demand from its own users. Path-heavy pedigrees were evidently the practical bottleneck, and the latest release addresses that directly.
Expect the next release to follow a pedtools or ribd bump, most likely with further formatting options rather than new relationship categories, since the description logic itself has been stable across the entries shown.
Other Analytics products tracked by Sparkpulse, ranked by recent ship velocity. Each card links to a full editorial trajectory and lets you pivot into a head-to-head comparison with either rfacebookstat or verbalisr.
A population-genetics workhorse in long-term maintenance, shipping only what CRAN demands.
An urban accessibility toolkit that grew into a distributional-equity toolkit.
A Google Ads API client for R that exists to stay one step ahead of deprecation.
The Carpentries' lesson skin, rebuilt on Bootstrap 5 with dark mode and a wider reach.
A project-bound modelling package that shipped its final scenario workflow and stopped.
A Japan Meteorological Agency client whose real product is keeping its bundled datasets current.
See all rfacebookstat alternatives → · See all verbalisr alternatives →
Latest ship moves from both products, interleaved chronologically. ⚡ = editorial spark.
Both compete on the same themes — r-package — within Analytics. rfacebookstat and verbalisr are shipping at a similar cadence (velocity 0.0 vs 0.0, both within Sparkpulse's "active" band). See the at-a-glance table above for a side-by-side breakdown of velocity, recent sparks, and editorial themes.
Sparkpulse doesn't pick a winner — we score release velocity, not feature parity. rfacebookstat and verbalisr are shipping at a similar cadence (velocity 0.0 vs 0.0, both within Sparkpulse's "active" band). For your specific use case, the alternatives sections above list other Analytics products to evaluate alongside.
Top rfacebookstat alternatives in Analytics are ranked by recent ship velocity. Browse the "rfacebookstat alternatives" section above for the current picks, or visit /alternatives/rfacebookstat for the full list with editorial commentary on each.
Top verbalisr alternatives in Analytics are ranked by recent ship velocity. Browse the "verbalisr alternatives" section above for the current picks, or visit /alternatives/verbalisr for the full list with editorial commentary on each.