There are times i just won't offer a link on my AS site as it looks so primitive as compared to fb. Surely the scrapcode and formatting can be tweaked to make this very very important feature more professional?

+1 for this as well.

I'm not sure what link preview you are using or perhaps you have modified the journal templates, but our link preview is identical to Facebook.

Yes, just tried it again on ActiveSocial.com.

Although in the list of images to use it did not show the site logo?????

It only picks up known image types. If the logo is setup in css as a background image then it won't appear.

i have tried this Will, at least 20+ times and each time it differs. I have not altered any templates. Not one.

FWIW, I just tried it out on a test copy of our site and the preview works as expected - with choices of pictures. Drew, do you have any script errors?

Will, is this all done client side or does ASP.NET on the host need Internet access?

Just for fun, I wanted to check this feature. It worked as expected; I even had a choice of thumbs.

I even had a choice of thumbs.

Left and right? Sorry, I couldn't resist. :)

thanks guys.. and no, no script errors. I will post a url that was funky and see if you helpful fellas see what i see. Perhaps my side is messed up somehow!

well, i don't mind being wrong! I just tested another 10 links and all worked well, one even worked better than fb.. I did upgrade to 5.6.1 yesterday and perhaps this squared away something that was causing some funk? Thank you all for helping me see the light!

Posted By Will Morgenweck on 27 Jan 2011 02:39 PM
I'm not sure what link preview you are using or perhaps you have modified the journal templates, but our link preview is identical to Facebook.

Here is a link preview comparison i just tried, and there is no way to say these two end results are close. fb has an element of ui slickness, AS does not:

And another attempt sharing a link from YouTube, clearly the end result is not identical to fb:

Has this been tested by AM? Has anything been done? I would like a concise note from AM staff to let me know if my reporting of this issue has caused any action item internally. This seems like a moderately simple task, and is causing many negative bits of feedback from new members at my site. Common reply to me: "this doesn't work, make it like facebook and i might post links".

Of course it has been tested and it is also used quite frequently.


Yes, we did take action to run through our tests again to verify that the feature works as intended.

How many images do i need to post to prove to you that is does NOT work as users want? I can post another one i did a moment ago if you like..

my last post not unmoderatable? This feature does not work as users intend. It might work as you intend, but it is not passing tests with my side. Please allow us the privilege of discussing this openly.

Drew,
We have allowed this to be discussed openly. Just because we have to take extra time to review your posts doesn't mean other people can't share their thoughts. Also, we aren't here to do everything like Facebook. Of course they do a lot of things right, but so does LinkedIn, Twitter, Jive, Ning and dozens of others. There are also plenty of things we could do to improve usability, but with all the user testing we have done we have never had someone say they couldn't use a particular feature. So, anyone is welcome to chime in on this thread and we will listen to the feedback, but unless we find a bug I don't see this particular feature changing until later this year.

Why do we have to run circles around issues Will: IT DOESN"T WORK. I have posted images to prove it. I can post more but you simply delete my posts. I could list of about 20 usability issues here with AS but it seems pointless as you do not take any criticism seriously. You keep telling me and others with critical views that we are in the minority, why not open a poll to find out where every vote is counted? Make this open and transparent. You say the same thing to me over and over and never address my actual concern.

This particular feature does not work properly. It works perhaps 30-60% of the time. I have posted images to prove this. Shall i create a list of urls for you to test? And you have never commented on my question regarding why the user caption gets placed as a comment below and not logically above the preview, as facebook and others do. This is so frustrating at times.

This is something I've known about Facebook for some time. Not all links posted on FB will have a thumbnail. Here is an article I picked up about FB linking doing a quick search on google, but there are others out there and that's how I found out about it some time ago, I just don't remember where exactly I read about it.

http://www.ehow.com/how_4938148_thu...share.html

Now, as for how AS actually finds and attaches a website thumb, I don't know. But as you can see, in FB, my site has no thumbnail, yet I do have images on my frontpage.



Edit: can't get the image to show. But there are some websites that won't display a thumb in fb.

The comment is posted below the link because it is the user's comment about the link. It's actually the way Facebook did it at the time we created the feature.

Ok, perhaps it is just my install, i will let others try a link i tried today to test. FB created a beautiful post while my site rendered nothing but dry text. I don't mind being wrong, but i encounter this poor link preview often. Test url: http://www.awarenessday.org/news.html
thanks folks.

I wouldn't expect Active Social to show a thumbnail from that site. There is only usable image and it is way down the page.

I tested my site on FB, no thumbnail

Then tested my site on my profile here at AM, got my logo as a thumb.

Go figure! Just 2 different ways of getting a thumb for a website it seems.

Posted By Will Morgenweck on 08 Apr 2011 08:26 PM
I wouldn't expect Active Social to show a thumbnail from that site. There is only usable image and it is way down the page.

And from a prior comment in this thread:

Posted By Will Morgenweck on 08 Apr 2011 08:26 PM
I'm not sure what link preview you are using or perhaps you have modified the journal templates, but our link preview is identical to Facebook.

These two quotes are not a cohesive view on this function. Certainly the formatting of the AS preview is not to fb standards, but if the link preview is identicial, clearly you refer to the result of the scraping done in code. As i clearly point out, this is *not* the case. Simply go to facebook and link preview that same url. You will see for yourself that i am correct..

I think it is time to fire up a pot of coffee and recode this whole function. It takes about 10x longer then fb to grab the preview and now about 90% of the tries result in no usable pic, but surely grabs a number of the advertisement images. I just tried firing up a YouTube link preview, and after about 15 seconds, nothing.. no image. Yet fb returned a fully-formed and attractively-laid-out preview in a split second *with* a correct image.

This function cannot be defended, and people now think my site is sucking because of this. Why **should** they come to my site and participate and post links when i am now even not bothering, but going to fb to do so?

Indefensible.

You also realize that this functionality is 100% dependent upon your server, hosting provider and your server's ability to access outbound resources quickly, right? Should we compare the resources Facebook has available to perform this specific task versus your single server?

I just did a test with YouTube and it took less than 2 seconds.

One thing about FB is that they can recognize certain tags to override/enhance the picture choosing. On my site they always picked a picture of an ad I displayed but now they can get my logo. I added the following to my pages:



Maybe AS can look for these as well, if it doesn't already. And maybe this is the cause of the discrepancy?

We will be adding support for the open graph protocol. Possibly for 2.0, but it might not be until the integrated release.

Not trying to stir up any issues. But I have my settings to show most recent posts first. But when I click on this multipage thread it goes to page two, which is not the correct page. In my case it should go to page 1 to show me the post I am viewing in the Community area.

Is this the same issue that Drew was very concerned about a while back?

Thanks for any explanation? I didn't want to create a new thread since I wasn't really sure if this is related to Drew's concern.