I have a question that was initially asked here: Open graph og:video Meta Tags content in 2010, but the answer no longer works.
I'm trying to show a YouTube video in Facebook (and have it play inside Facebook) when a link is shared. The following og:video tag on the page doesn't work (it never really did):
<meta property="og:video" content="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZH4YSF-i5dY" />
The solution proposed here https://stackoverflow.com/a/17811187/188740 in 2013 worked really well until recently. It was to change the og:video to something like this (notice the way the v query string value is represented):
<meta property="og:video" content="https://www.youtube.com/v/ZH4YSF-i5dY" />
That no longer works and Facebook completely ignores it.
Another option I tried is to put the YouTube URL in og:url:
<meta property="og:url" content="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZH4YSF-i5dY" />
That approach instructs Facebook to scrape YouTube to get the thumbnail image, but clicking on the post sends the user to the original page that was shared. The click behavior is the right one (I want the user to go back to the originally shared page), but there's no way for the user to play the video.
Anyone know the solution to this problem?
Update:
Unfortunately, it's starting to look more and more like this is a change that Facebook made in August 2017 (and rolled out slowly across different regions over several months) and it's by design. In other words, there's no way to make this work. :-( If anyone has a workaround, it would be great for the community to know.
Relevant discussions:
https://developers.facebook.com/bugs/1963535797258090/
https://developers.facebook.com/bugs/364444227315183/
https://productforums.google.com/forum/#!topic/youtube/l69gPBlkXN0
I have placed these meta tags on a site I'm working on. I then have a 'share this page' type feature which content authors can override the default content which appears in the share window using the og tags which are working fine for Facebook, however Twitter is not working.
<meta property="og:image" content="test test test" />
<meta property="og:title" content="test title goes in here" />
Reading around a bit, I can see that it shows here
that the fall back is the og tags which I already have. I've also read about twitter cards however I don't think I'm using them as they describe - its just a share button? This post explains using different ones:
http://davidwalsh.name/twitter-cards
I'm wondering if anyone can shed any light on why the og tags may not work? Do you need to apply for something from Twitter??
Turns out I needed specific tags for Twitter and Facebook after all. The doco was out dated - would recommend reviewing new doco if you need to do this as it changes all the time..
I have been using addthis script for social media sharing. Now I have to share a song in facebook. I have done so many searches and surfed a lot. I could not find the perfect solution to share a song in facebook using addthis script.
Some posts said that need to keep a facebook appid to share. And some posts said do it simply and don't get complicated. But they does not show the way to reach a solution.
Please guide me to understand what things need to be done for sharing a song in facebook via addthis.
For information, I have tested the following codes to share a song.
<meta property='og:audio' content='song location path' />
<meta property='og:audio:title' content='title' />
<meta property='og:audio:artist' content='Artist name' />
<meta property='og:audio:type' content='application/mp3' />
Unfortunately AddThis doesn't have any control over how your site is shared to Facebook. Your best bet for learning which Open Graph tags to use is to go to the official Open Graph Protocol site http://ogp.me/
When someone posts a link to a web site in Facebook, it populates the link preview box with a photo and some text from the site.
If someone posts a link to my site in Facebook, it is generally just get the site's domain name and one of the images that appears on the site. No text appears.
I would like to be able to control what text and images appear in the link. Is there a specification that they use? Can I provide some metadata so Facebook will display what I want?
Here is Facebook's developer page on their share function.
Basically there are some simple metatags you can use to optimize what appears on FB
<meta name="title" content="title" />
<meta name="description" content="description " />
<link rel="image_src" href="thumbnail_image" / >
AND:
The wiki article doesn't mention this, but Facebook CACHES the results of your site for awhile. So, if you're debugging & doing quick iterations, you either need to wait awhile, or rename the page (index2.html, index3.html, etc) until you find something that works.
I am trying to implement share this method. I am using the code as follows
http://www.facebook.com/share.php?u=my_website_url
Now when Facebook is showing it showing some thumbnails at left side. These images are picked from my website. How can I pick a particular image as thumbnail or at least stop it showing thumbnail?
You can check it with my blog address.
From Facebook's spec, use a code like this:
<meta property="og:image" content="http://siim.lepisk.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/01/siim-blog-fb.png" />
Source: Facebook Share
This blog post seems to have your answer:
http://blog.capstrat.com/articles/facebook-share-thumbnail-image/
Specifically, use a tag like the following:
<link rel="image_src"
type="image/jpeg"
href="http://www.domain.com/path/icon-facebook.gif" />
The name of the image must be the same as in the example.
Click "Making Sure the Preview Works"
Note: Tags can be correct but Facebook only scrapes every 24 hours, according to their documentation. Use the Facebook Lint page to get the image into Facebook.
http://developers.facebook.com/tools/lint/
My tags were correct but Facebook only scrapes every 24 hours, according to their documentation. Using the Facebook Lint page got the image into Facebook.
Enter your URL here and FB will update the metadata from your page:
https://developers.facebook.com/tools/debug (updated link)
Facebook uses og:tags and the Open Graph Protocol to decipher what information to display when previewing your URL in a share dialog
or in a news feed on facebook.
The og:tags contain information such as :
The title of the page
The type of page
The URL
The websites name
A description of the page
Facebook user_id's of administrators of the page ( on facebook )
Here is an example ( taken from the facebook documentation ) of some og:tags
<meta property="og:title" content="The Rock"/>
<meta property="og:type" content="movie"/>
<meta property="og:url" content="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0117500/"/>
<meta property="og:image" content="http://ia.media-imdb.com/rock.jpg"/>
Once you have implemented the correct markup of the og:tags and set their values, you can test how facebook will view your URL by using the Facebook Debugger. The debugger tool will also highlight any problems it finds with the og:tags on the page or lack there-of.
One thing to keep in mind is that facebook does do some caching with regard to this information, so in order for changes to take effect your page will have t be scraped as stated in the documentation :
Editing Meta Tags
You can update the attributes of your page by updating your page's
tags. Note that og:title and og:type are only editable
initially - after your page receives 50 likes the title becomes fixed,
and after your page receives 10,000 likes the type becomes fixed.
These properties are fixed to avoid surprising users who have liked
the page already. Changing the title or type tags after these limits
are reached does nothing, your page retains the original title and
type.
For the changes to be reflected on Facebook, you must force your page
to be scraped. The page is scraped when an admin for the page clicks
the Like button or when the URL is entered into the Facebook URL
Linter Facebook Debugger...
I see that all the answers provided are correct. However, one important detail was overlooked: The size of the image MUST be at least 200 X 200 px, otherwise Facebook will substitute the thumbnail with the first available image that meets the criteria on the page. Another fact is that the minimum required is to include the 3 metas that Facebook requires for the og:image to take effect:
<meta property="og:title" content="Title of the page" />
<!-- NEXT LINE Even if page is dynamically generated and URL contains query parameters -->
<meta property="og:url" content="http://yoursite.com" />
<meta property="og:image" content="http://convertaholics.com/convertaholics-og.png" />
Debug your page with Facebook debugger and fix all the warnings and it should work like a charm!
https://developers.facebook.com/tools/debug
I was having the same problems and believe I have solved it. I used the link meta tag as mentioned here to point to the image I wanted, but the key is that if you do that FB won't pull any other images as choices. Also if your image is too big, you won't have any choices at all.
Here's how I fixed my site http://gnorml.com/blog/facebook-link-thumbnails/
Here’s how this works all:
You need the ability to access the HTML on the particular webpage you are sharing. It'll probably work site wide too if you use a common header file. I have not tried this, but it should work. You'll just get the same image for all pages if you do this though.
You need to add these HTML meta tags into page in the . It will not work if you put it in the . Make sure to customize per your a) image, b) description, c) URL, and d) title.
A Real Example.
<meta property="og:image" content="http://www.coachesneedsocial.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/BannerWCircleImages-1.jpg" />
<meta property="og:description" content="Coaches share their secrets to success so you can rock 2015." />
<meta property="og:url"content="http://www.coachesneedsocial.com/coacheswisdomtelesummit/" />
<meta property="og:title" content="Coaches Wisdom Telesummit" />
Save
Open a fresh Facebook post, and retry the page you wanted to share.
If you are having trouble… you can debug it with this Facebook tool. It looks more geeky than it is. It tells you what Facebook is seeing when you post in the URL to share.
https://developers.facebook.com/tools/debug/og/object/
Big Tip.. make sure the “quote marks” are the same in your HTML (they should look like 2 straight marks and no curves… sometimes programs change these to different fonts and it goofs up the code.
Sharing on Facebook: How to Improve Your Results by Customizing the Image, Title, and Text
From the link above. For the best possible share, you'll want to suggest 3 pieces of data in your HTML:
Title
Short description
Image
This accomplished by the following, placed inside the 'head' tag of your HTML:
Title: <title>INSERT POST TITLE</title>
Image: <meta property=og:image content="http://site.com/YOUR_IMAGE.jpg"/>
Description: <meta name=description content="INSERT YOUR SUMMARY TEXT"/>
If you website is static HTML, you'll have to do this for every page using your HTML editor.
If you're using a CMS like Drupal, you can automate a lot of it (see above link). If you use wordpress, you can probably implement something similar using the Drupal example as a guideline. I hope you found these useful.
Finally, you can always manually edit your share posts. See this example with illustrations.
I also had an issue on a site I was working on last week. I implemented a like box and tested the like box. Then I went ahead to add an image to my header (the ob:image meta). Still the correct image did not show up on my facebook notification.
I tried everything, and came to the conclusion that every single implementation of a like button is cached. So let's say you clock the Like button on url A, then you specify an image in the header and you test it by clicking the Luke button again on url A. You won't see the image as the page is cached. The image will show up when you click on the Like button on page B.
To reset the cache, you have to use the lint debugger tool that's mentioned above, and validate all the Urls for those that are cached... That's the only thing that worked for me.
The easiest way I found to set Facebook Open Graph to every Joomla article, was to place in com_content/article/default.php override, next code:
$app = JFactory::getApplication();
$path = JURI::root();
$document = JFactory::getDocument();
$document->addCustomTag('<meta property="og:title" content="YOUR SITE TITLE" />');
$document->addCustomTag('<meta property="og:name" content="YOUR SITE NAME" />');
$document->addCustomTag('<meta property="og:description" content="YOUR SITE DESCRIPTION" />');
$document->addCustomTag('<meta property="og:site_name" content="YOUR SITE NAME" />');
if (isset($images->image_fulltext) and !empty($images->image_fulltext)) :
$document->addCustomTag('<meta property="og:image" content="'.$path.'<?php echo htmlspecialchars($images->image_fulltext); ?>" />');
else :
$document->addCustomTag('<meta property="og:image" content="'.$path.'images/logo.png" />');
endif;
This will place meta og tags in the head with details from current article.