Sharing mefi with Google+ July 25, 2011 10:43 AM Subscribe
Mefi links look weird on Google+ and not like any other link I post there. Mefi example, AskMe example. Is there a way to provide a more descriptive description, or delete it altogether? Also, will there eventually be a widget (?) like there is with Twitter and Facebook?
pb, I think what desjardins is noting regarding linking to MeFi threads from G+ or FB is that in the description, after the title text (Thread Title | MetaFilter/AskMe), you get all of the navigation links instead of, say, the text of the post. Is there a way to notate the post text so that it's what shows up in descriptions when that metadata is pulled from the site? Sorta like what shows up in RSS...?
posted by carsonb at 10:51 AM on July 25, 2011
posted by carsonb at 10:51 AM on July 25, 2011
Yeah, we do some custom coding for things like embedly or facebook that takes out the post and title content, and as soon as Google+ issues some docs explaining how their display API works, we'll definitely update things to work better there.
posted by mathowie (staff) at 10:53 AM on July 25, 2011
posted by mathowie (staff) at 10:53 AM on July 25, 2011
Right, Google+ is scraping the page for that info, so they're getting the entire page in the process. Their scraper isn't smart enough to grab the unique content on the page.
If they're using something like oEmbed we could probably set up a simple API for them to use. I did a little Googling around to try to answer that and I haven't come up with one yet. If they're not, we've gone through the trouble of setting up that API without fixing this particular problem. The documentation for Google+ for developers is lacking right now.
posted by pb (staff) at 10:55 AM on July 25, 2011
If they're using something like oEmbed we could probably set up a simple API for them to use. I did a little Googling around to try to answer that and I haven't come up with one yet. If they're not, we've gone through the trouble of setting up that API without fixing this particular problem. The documentation for Google+ for developers is lacking right now.
posted by pb (staff) at 10:55 AM on July 25, 2011
Once Google+ is open to the public without invitations we can consider it for inclusion in the social apps.
Just to be clear, I didn't mean the listings of social apps in user profiles - that's been covered in a previous meta. I meant the "share" links on the right side of each page. I understand your point about it being open to the public first.
posted by desjardins at 10:58 AM on July 25, 2011
Just to be clear, I didn't mean the listings of social apps in user profiles - that's been covered in a previous meta. I meant the "share" links on the right side of each page. I understand your point about it being open to the public first.
posted by desjardins at 10:58 AM on July 25, 2011
desjardins: Is there a way to provide a more descriptive description, or delete it altogether?
When I go topost share a link on goggles+ there's a link included in the post dialog that says "Remove description". That takes all the nav gobbledygunk out and you can just put the post title (or whatever) in the main 'share' text area (and delete the link URL, since it's been added as a separate section already).
posted by carsonb at 10:58 AM on July 25, 2011
When I go to
posted by carsonb at 10:58 AM on July 25, 2011
I meant the "share" links on the right side of each page. I understand your point about it being open to the public first.
Oh, I see, had some widget confusion there. My first guess is that we're not likely to add more services to the Share links. If Google+ turns out to be used as widely as Twitter and Facebook we can consider it, but it's way too early to make that call. We could potentially add dozens of share links to the side of the page, including dozens of services that are more widely used than Google+, but we want that to be a minimal part of the page.
posted by pb (staff) at 11:05 AM on July 25, 2011
Oh, I see, had some widget confusion there. My first guess is that we're not likely to add more services to the Share links. If Google+ turns out to be used as widely as Twitter and Facebook we can consider it, but it's way too early to make that call. We could potentially add dozens of share links to the side of the page, including dozens of services that are more widely used than Google+, but we want that to be a minimal part of the page.
posted by pb (staff) at 11:05 AM on July 25, 2011
Yeah, we do some custom coding for things like embedly or facebook that takes out the post and title content, and as soon as Google+ issues some docs explaining how their display API works, we'll definitely update things to work better there.
On Facebook, including some description would be helpful. As it stands, when posting a link to FB there is no description, which means there is no way to add any (unless it's in the "about this link" bar).
posted by KokuRyu at 1:05 PM on July 25, 2011
On Facebook, including some description would be helpful. As it stands, when posting a link to FB there is no description, which means there is no way to add any (unless it's in the "about this link" bar).
posted by KokuRyu at 1:05 PM on July 25, 2011
On Facebook, including some description would be helpful. As it stands, when posting a link to FB there is no description, which means there is no way to add any (unless it's in the "about this link" bar).
You can still add a description - you just need to know where to look. Click on the highlighted spot and you will be able to add text to the link box.
posted by m@f at 3:51 PM on July 25, 2011
You can still add a description - you just need to know where to look. Click on the highlighted spot and you will be able to add text to the link box.
posted by m@f at 3:51 PM on July 25, 2011
I did some experimenting with this today and found out that both Google+ and Facebook use the text in a
posted by pb (staff) at 12:47 PM on July 26, 2011
description meta tag if one is available. So I set the site to look for their user-agents and add a description tag in those cases. So new posts going forward should look better when you link to them on Facebook or Google+.posted by pb (staff) at 12:47 PM on July 26, 2011
Yay! If the scheduling works out, maybe I'll be able to buy you a literal beer!
posted by desjardins at 12:51 PM on July 26, 2011
posted by desjardins at 12:51 PM on July 26, 2011
So new posts going forward should look better when you link to them on Facebook or Google+.
Looks like this is working well. Awesome!
posted by wildcrdj at 4:03 PM on July 26, 2011
Looks like this is working well. Awesome!
posted by wildcrdj at 4:03 PM on July 26, 2011
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That's a question for Google+ support. I'm not sure there's anything we can do on this end.
...will there eventually be a widget...
Once Google+ is open to the public without invitations we can consider it for inclusion in the social apps. I'm not sure profiles are entirely public—that's a requirement too. If Google provides widgets that we can include we can take a look at what they offer and see what makes sense.
posted by pb (staff) at 10:47 AM on July 25, 2011