Twitter Cards are a way to attach rich media experiences (images, videos, audio clips, etc.) to tweets that link to your content. When you share a link on Twitter, whether it's to a website, a blog post, a product page, or anything else, a "Card" with additional information and media will be shown in the tweet.

There are several types of Twitter Cards, each designed to showcase specific types of content effectively:

• Summary Card: This is the most general type of Twitter Card. It includes a title, description, and thumbnail image alongside the tweet. It's useful for sharing articles, blog posts, and website links.
• Summary Card with Large Image: Similar to the Summary Card, but with a larger, more prominent image. This Card is ideal for content where visuals are a key focus, making it more engaging and likely to attract attention in a crowded Twitter feed.
• App Card: Designed for mobile app developers to promote their apps. The Card includes a direct download link, and it can display the app's name, description, and either the app icon or a custom image. It can also show the price and app store ratings.
• Player Card: This Card allows you to share audio and video clips. It can include multimedia content directly within the tweet, enabling users to play the content without leaving Twitter. This is ideal for sharing music, podcasts, or video clips.

To use Twitter Cards, you need to add specific meta tags to the HTML of your webpage. These tags provide Twitter with the information it needs to build the Card when someone tweets your link.

Twitter cards are a powerful tool for increasing engagement and driving traffic to your content, making tweets more interactive and visually appealing. They allow for a more immersive experience directly within the Twitter platform, encouraging users to explore and share content.

Twitter Cards work by leveraging metadata tags that you include in the HTML of your webpage. When a URL is shared on Twitter, Twitter's crawlers fetch the page and look for these specific meta tags within the head section of the HTML to understand how to display the content within a tweet.

Here's a general overview of how this process works:

1. Sharing a URL on Twitter: When a URL is shared in a tweet, Twitter sends its crawlers to access the webpage linked in the tweet.

2. Crawling for metadata: The crawlers look for meta tags in the page's HTML that are specifically formatted for Twitter Cards. These tags describe the type of content (e.g., summary, app, player) and provide details such as the title, description, image, and more.

Here's how these meta tags look like for my web app, makeaudio.app:

<meta name="twitter:card" content="summary_large_image" />
<meta name="twitter:title" content="makeaudio.app - AI-powered Text to Audio Converter" />
<meta name="twitter:description" content="makeaudio.app is an AI-powered text to audio converter that supports 16 languages and offers 6 lifelike voice options. With the ability to handle text input up to 100,000 characters and generate audio in 3 output formats, makeaudio.app makes creating high-quality audio content a breeze." />
<meta name="twitter:image:type" content="image/jpeg" />
<meta name="twitter:image:width" content="1354" />
<meta name="twitter:image:height" content="702" />
<meta name="twitter:image:alt" content="makeaudio.app - AI-powered Text to Audio Converter" />
<meta name="twitter:image" content="https://www.makeaudio.app/twitter-image-pwu6ef.jpg?0e953a48f8e9dde1" />

In this example, the meta tags provide information about the card type (summary_large_image), the title, description, and details about the image to be displayed, including its type, dimensions, alt text, and URL.

3. Rendering the Card: Once Twitter's crawlers have fetched and processed the meta tags, the information is used to render a Twitter Card within the tweet. This card then displays according to the type specified, enriching the tweet with media, descriptions, and other content directly in the Twitter feed.

Twitter Card tags vs. Open Graph tags

Twitter Card tags are similar to Open Graph (OG) tags, which are used more broadly for defining metadata for webpages to control how content appears when shared on social media platforms, including Facebook, LinkedIn, and others. They use the same conventions.

When Twitter's web crawler looks for tags on a page, it first checks for the Twitter-specific property, and if not present, falls back to the supported Open Graph property. So if you already have Open Graph tags on your page, Twitter can use those as a fallback. This fallback mechanism ensures that sharing links on Twitter can still result in visually appealing and informative content previews, even if the specific Twitter Card metadata isn't available.

To validate your Twitter Cards, you can use the official Twitter Card Validator tool. Here's the process:

• Go to the Twitter Card Validator: https://cards-dev.twitter.com/validator

• Enter the URL of the webpage you want to validate in the "Card URL" field.
• Click the "Preview card" button.

The Card Validator will then fetch your webpage and analyze the Twitter Card metadata. It provides a log of information, such as:

• Whether the page was fetched successfully
• The number of meta tags found on the page
• The type of Twitter Card detected (e.g., summary, summary_large_image, app, player)
• Any errors or issues with the Card

For example, a successful validation might show a log like this:

• INFO: Page fetched successfully
• INFO: 13 meta tags were found
• INFO: twitter:card = summary_large_image tag found
• INFO: Card loaded successfully

This indicates that the webpage has the necessary Twitter Card meta tags, the summary_large_image Card type was detected, and the Card loaded properly.

Using the Tweet Composer for Card previews

As of recently, Twitter has removed the preview functionality from the Card Validator. When you visit the Card Validator page, you will notice that in the "Card preview" section, instead of seeing a visual preview of your Card, you'll find a link that says "Card preview has moved to Tweet Composer":

If you click on the link in the Validator, you'll see a message explaining this change.

Twitter recommends using the Tweet Composer in the Twitter client itself (on Twitter.com, Twitter for Android, or Twitter for iOS apps) to check a preview that accurately reflects the current display of the Card on Twitter. To do this:

• Start creating a new tweet
• Paste the link into the Tweet Composer
• The Card preview will render automatically if the URL has appropriate Card metadata (no need to post the tweet)

The Card Validator remains accessible for submitting new domains and using the logs to confirm that Cards are accessible or recognized by Twitter on specific URLs. It can also be used to provide a "hint" to the Cards crawler to revisit your site by adding a unique parameter to the URL (see the Cards troubleshooting documentation).

Keep in mind that Card data continues to be cached for up to 7 days before being refreshed, so there may be a delay before new metadata is reflected on Twitter.