Home / Plugin: Hubbub Lite - Fast, Reliable Social Sharing Buttons / Open Facebook App when Sharing Facebook
Hi, I’ve noticed on your demo site, when Facebook share button is clicked, it opens up the browser instead of the Facebook app. Is it the intended behaviour? If yes, why it doesn’t open the app when the user has it, which is probably the desired outcome?
Thank you.
Hello!
Thank you for your question. Deep links (this is the term most mobile operating systems use to describe a link that opens into an app) into mobile apps are very convenient for those that have the apps installed. I agree with you. In fact, I might prefer that Facebook handled these share requests the way that you’re describing.
However, Facebook has chosen not to redirect these links into their apps. They could choose to do so but they haven’t done so for these specific links. They call them “share intents”. And they have several ways of sharing from a mobile browser.
Other links, such as links to Facebook Pages or Groups, they’ve redirected into their app. But Facebook themselves has chosen not to redirect these links into their app.
They have an entire section of their Developer site dedicated to sharing across multiple platforms. We do our best to keep up with their latest advice on how to share.
Thank you for your question!
Thank you for your detailed reply, it’s really helpful.
Just one more question, I’ve noticed that Mediavine websites which use Grow Social, do actually open Facebook share links in the app. Do they run some other version of this plugin? Isn’t it the same?
@woorooo Perhaps you can share a link to website that you see this?
Sure, pupvine.com is one such example. However while I was testing it, I realized that it opens up the app only when the default browser is used, chrome in my case. Or the link was open via Facebook app originally. When Firefox is used it doesn’t.
After that I’ve checked your demo website again and it seems it also opens up the Facebook app, as it should, so I guess I was using the other browser before when I started the topic. So everything is great, will probably have to move my website to your plugin soon.
By the way, ability to set a specific image for Pinterest share is in only in the Pro or the lite version as well?
@woorooo That is good information to know! Perhaps Firefox is not triggering the deep link. We will follow up with Mozilla to see what may be happening there. But, as you can see, it is up to the browser, operating system, and Facebook how to handle each link in each circumstance.
Yes, Hubbub Pro has many customization options for how people are able to share on Pinterest and other networks. We’d love to have you!
Sounds great, thank you 🙂
