I made my first Buzzfeed list/article (don’t worry, it’s not as inane as it sounds; it’s about things buried far back in the mix of old songs that you might not have noticed). I’m trying to link to it on my Facebook, and instead of creating that nice thumbnail image with the title, all it’s doing is enlarging the thumbnail, not adding the title, and showing an arrow on the thumbnail as if it were a video!
Any thoughts as to what I’m doing wrong? I’ve been Googling for what seems like hours, and everyone I’ve asked is stumped. Thanks in advance!
You can add meta tags to a page that specifically tells Facebook what image, title and slug to use when one links to that page.
Looking at the source of a random article on Buzzfeed, it looks like they do use those tags. They start with “og:”
I am wondering if those are messed up for your article. Either you didn’t fill them in or Buzzfeed’s system didn’t fill them in for you or what.
If you don’t want to post the link to your article here, send me a PM and I will look at the source to see. Although if it’s broken, I don’t know how to fix it, other than telling you to contact BuzzFeed.
But you should be able to edit the link title and description before you post, shouldn’t you? If you post to FB from clicking on the post-to-FB link on the article.
Let me know if you see anything out of the ordinary! When I put that link into my Facebook status window, all that happens is what I described; Facebook doesn’t allow me to edit anything. And I’m not seeing a post-to-FB link on the article itself; only a “Facebook Conversations” box at the bottom where I could post a comment on the article, but I don’t think that’s what you mean, right?
Looks like it’s just a “bug” in the way Facebook auto-parses links. Have you ever noticed that Buzzfeed articles, even if they are nothing but an embedded video, have a lead-off photo? This must be why. (And videos are videos, not articles) If you lead off with a video, Facebook’s link parser assumes you’re just posting a video and treats it as such.
There is an image, and title and text specified in the meta tags (image) but I think Facebook would prefer you start off with an actual image in your article.
ETA: The “Post to facebook” link is at the top, a blue box with the FB logo. next to Twitter and G+ et al. I clicked it and got the same result, tho.
Ugh, super frustrating. I do start with text, above the first link. But regardless, I don’t want the arrow to be there because then it looks like a video, and people are probably less inclined to click on those. And without the title showing up it doesn’t do me much good anyway…
Also, there’s no Facebook or Twitter or any kind of links that I’m seeing at the top of the page. Gaaaahhhhh!
Ha, I got frustrated and Buzzfeed wasn’t writing me back, so I took it down. And then, two hours later, they wrote me… and told me they can’t help me because I took it down. :smack:
So I redid it (new and improved!) to see if it still behaved the same way, and sure enough, it did. So I contacted them so we’ll see what they say. In the meantime, you can see it here. I hope you like it, but hopefully I can get it fixed before asking people to share it!
