Reply to Aaron on the use of Twitter image metadata

Wat wil ik doen op IndieWebCamp Utrecht? by Frank Meeuwsen (Digging the Digital)

Thanks Aaron, for your pointers to the discussion with Chris on the use of the Twitter:image metatag. I use the Yoast SEO plugin and this gives me the opportunity to upload or choose a specific image for the Summary Large Image card. Otherwise it takes the Featured Image from my blogpost. But here’s the thing, I want my blog to be more of a commonplace book where I can quickly jot down thoughts and ideas, share bookmarks and connect ideas. I want to stay in the flow of writing and sharing and not have to think about finding a proper image, uploading it, selecting etc. Also, most of the times, the note or bookmark is that short, an extra image would just be overkill for the information.

But…Since I use the Syndication Links plugin from David Shanske, my post are also shared on Twitter (I don’t really care about other silo’s for now). This is defaulted to the Summary Large Image card. But when there is no image, it just shows an ugly icon.

So here’s the idea: When I post something without the Twitter:image metatag, take some random image from a collection I previously uploaded and use one of those for the card on Twitter. Or take an image based on the sort of post I choose from Post Kinds, another fabulous plugin by David.

I could also get a random image from Unsplash, based on keywords in the post. Or maybe get a featured image or first image from the bookmarked site.

These are some ideas I want to discuss and explore on the IndieWebCamp.