Hello.
We’ve recently been approved/white-listed for ‘player’ cards and our social team has been testing some things out just to see how we can incorporate them into our strategy.
Unfortunately, some of the ways in which they are displaying on desktop and mobile devices seem to not 100% match what is expected based upon the example provided on the Twitter Player card specs page.
For example, we see the following in the validator for this URL:
Initial validation shows a small squared image:
Upon clicking the video, the video expands to full-on widescreen:
The same activity occurs when you view it on desktop version of Twitter:
That’s not it, when you look at the same tweet in the Twitter Mobile app, it doesn’t show the video/image in the initial tweet timeline at all (until you click through):
Initial tweet view taken on Google Pixel using Twitter App:
View when you click through to the page of the tweet (video shows larger, also on Google Pixel):
Weird that you actually have to click through in order to see that there is a ‘player’ video associated with the tweet? This doesn’t seem like it would be normal given the example Twitter provides.
I’ve gone so far as to even look up the example used on the Twitter player card page and it has the same issue (also a screenshot from Google Pixel).
So my two questions are:
-
On desktop, is there a reason why the video/image is initially showing up as a squared icon rather than a larger widescreen video/image?
-
Is there a reason on mobile devices why no video/image is showing in the initial tweet, and why it’s only showing after you click through to the tweet?
I’ve gone through the trouble-shooting and found the following:
“On Twitter’s iPhone and Android native apps, a Player Card initially appears as the image preview (specified via twitter:image) with a “play” icon over it.” Makes me feel like the image/video should be appearing on the mobile app.
“You should make this image the same dimensions as your player. Images with fewer than 68,600 pixels (a 262x262 square image, or a 350x196 16:9 image) will cause the player card not to render.” Our image for the example page (here) definitely definitely fits the minimum size requirements and looks to be pretty close to the same aspect ratio as the player.
Hoping there is something we can do to address my two questions above.
Thanks!
