Talk proposal: Making URLs look awesome when people share them

[drnic]

When someone sends you a URL via any social app it might look dull, or it might be presented as an image, with title and description. How does this magic work, and how do we add it to our websites?

The Open Graph protocol was invented by Facebook so that any URL, when shared within FB, could be made to look more like Facebook -- the title, description, canonical URL, AND a glamourous 1x1.91 aspect ratio image.

Twitter followed. Now every social app, down to the Apple iMessage app, will attempt to create a pretty version of URLs when we share them.

How does this work, how can we add it to our apps, and how can we generate dynamic/live images so that they reflect our app's data?

I've been using these ideas for a new business to help Shopify sites at https://mocralivelinks.com/