Field notes
Playbooks, teardowns and the occasional argument — everything we have learned helping creators grow across every major platform.
A universal link opens the app when it is installed and the website when it is not. A scheme URI opens the app or does nothing at all — silently.
The same link renders two different cards. Facebook gives a title 88 characters on desktop and about 65 on a phone — and the phone is where most of the taps are.
Every platform treats a link differently. Here is what happens to a social media link once you post it, and the four decisions worth making first.
Open Graph tags decide what every platform shows when your link is shared. Here is the minimum set, the optional ones, and the mistakes that break cards.
Facebook caches what it read the first time. Here is why a fixed page still shows the old image, and the ways to force a re-scrape.
A link preview not showing is almost always one of six things. Here they are in order of likelihood, each with the check that confirms it.
Twitter image sizes on X: 16:9 for single images, 1200x628 for link cards, and the timeline crop that decides what people actually see.