Twitter Card Woes

A couple of weeks ago fellow caricaturist/illustrator Hamilton Cline dropped me a line to ask why I didn’t use Twitter Cards for my tweets, seeing as how most of my posts have images that would be a lot more interesting to look at than a simple URL would be.

My answer was “What the $%#@ are ‘Twitter Cards’?”

Well since then I have been trying to get this figured out. I’ve set up the proper code through a WordPress Plug-in (JP Twitter Cards). I have applied for a Twitter DEV account (not sure I ever got approved, actually). I have set up and validated several posts using the Twitter card Validator, and they looks great in the previews.

No love when WordPress generates my automatic tweet when I post. Just the usual boring:

Sketch o’the Week- Carl Reiner! http://t.co/90EfGh6fYt

… Tom Richmond (@art4mad) September 10, 2014

I tried again to tweak the setting to make it work with this post and this old image, but again no dice. I am at a loss. If any web-saavy readers want to fill me in on what I am doing wrong, I’d love to find out.

UPDATE– Looks like I have my answer. I am actually doing everything right, and my Twitter Cards are working just as they should be. The reason they are not displaying the images and summary automatically is that Twitter does not allow that. Only images uploaded to Twitter directly or Vines are allowed to display by default. Twitter cards have a “Show Summary” link on them that will expand the tweet to show the actual Twitter card. All my tweets have such a link, so they are working correctly.

What a disappointment. What’s the use of having a more visual Tweet is it still needs a click through to see it? That’s what link in the original tweet is for. Useless.