twittercard

Twitter Card is a metadata protocol used by Twitter to attach rich media and contextual information to tweets that link to a webpage. By including Twitter-specific meta tags in a page’s HTML, publishers can control how the linked content appears in timelines, potentially increasing engagement and click-through rates.

Card types include several formats. Summary Card shows a title, description, and a small thumbnail. Summary Card with Large Image emphasizes a larger image. Photo Card is optimized for image-heavy links. Gallery Card supports multiple images. App Card is used to promote mobile apps with downloadable links. Player Card embeds video or audio media directly from the linked page. Each type has corresponding tag values that publishers set in the page metadata.

Implementation works by adding Twitter-specific meta tags in the page header. The essential tag is twitter:card, whose value identifies the card type (for example, summary, summary_large_image, photo, gallery, app, or player). Other common tags include twitter:title, twitter:description, and twitter:image for the media preview. Additional fields may be used to tailor the Card, such as twitter:image:alt for accessibility, or twitter:player, twitter:player:width, twitter:player:height, and twitter:player:stream for Player Cards. App Cards use twitter:app:name:platform, twitter:app:id:platform, and twitter:app:url:platform to link to the app storefronts.

Validation and deployment: pages should be accessible to Twitter’s crawler and served over HTTPS. Publishers can validate their cards using the Twitter Card Validator, which helps verify metadata and catch errors before publishing.

History and scope: Twitter Cards were introduced to enable richer link previews on Twitter. Over time, Twitter expanded card types and features to accommodate various content formats and publisher needs.