Twitter Cards

API version 1API version 1.1
Updated on Mon, 2013-11-04 17:29

Introduction

Twitter cards make it possible for you to attach media experiences to Tweets that link to your content. Simply add a few lines of HTML to your webpages, and users who Tweet links to your content will have a "card" added to the Tweet that’s visible to all of their followers.

Four simple steps

  1. Review the documentation for the type of card you want to implement.
  2. Add the pertinent meta tags to your page.
  3. Run your URLs against the validator tool to be approved.
  4. After approval, tweet the URL and see the Card appear below your tweet.

Please note that approval for the Player Card and the Product Card may take additional time to approve.

Types of Cards


A "summary" Twitter Card on twitter.com with content attribution.

There are 8 Card types that can be attached to Tweets, each of which has a beautiful consumption experience built for Twitter's web and mobile clients:

  • Summary Card: Default Card, including a title, description, thumbnail, and Twitter account attribution.
  • Summary Card with Large Image: Similar to a Summary Card, but offers the ability to prominently feature an image.
  • Photo Card: A Tweet sized photo Card.
  • Gallery Card: A Tweet Card geared toward highlighting a collection of photos.
  • App Card: A Tweet Card for providing a profile of an application.
  • App Installs and Deep-Linking: An extension to any Card that provides app download and deep linking.
  • Player Card: A Tweet sized video/audio/media player Card.
  • Product Card: A Tweet Card to better represent product content.

How Cards Work

Twitter Cards are powered by meta tags that you add to your website. For each URL on your site, you can have a unique Card associated with it.

When somebody tweets a URL with Card meta tags, Twitter's web crawler will fetch the Card from your website and store it in the Twitter cache.

To learn more about how the meta tags and our web crawler works, please check out Getting Started.

We hope you enjoy using Twitter Cards, and if you have any questions, drop us a line on the Twitter Cards Forum. Thanks, and happy coding!