For those of you that are taking full advantage of the possibility to share photos on Connect with the HTML image tag, please note that photos in the comments by other users that have been uploaded will become the only post images that are available when sharing and your own html img tag images not.
In other words, to ensure that your Main Featured Header Image remains available on social media platform shares (like Facebook), it is my experience that you need to upload your preferred header image and not use the HTML image tag. When mixing the two types of images in your post, only the uploaded images are available as featured photo on Facebook.
Well, I can tell you that this is only partly correct @JeroenM .
I perfectly remember a post, shared by one of the mod. on LGW, where my photo appeared as a cover, even if the post (written by a Googler) had a cover photo, and my photo (here below) was in one of the replies
Even if of course FB cannot pick a photo that is only embedded, and not physically loaded, the fact to have a cover photo uploaded do not guarantees that the photo will be used as a cover photo on FB.
Personally, to control the aspect of my contents on Social Media, I write the post in there and add the photo that I want to show, instead of using the “sharing option”. G+ had a better option than FB, allowing you to scroll and choose the photo tu use as a cover on the shared post.
The purpose of the screen-share picture above was only to illustrate that Facebook allows us to browse through all the available photos and let the person that shares decide which photo is selected (perhaps similar to G+). However, this only works if the person sharing does use the clean link for the post.
Sadly, the link that you get from the “share” function on Connect is not always clean. This can limit which picture shows up is available. I have to admit, the way Facebook behaves and also the way Connect pushes pictures with shares has changed many times in the last 6 months and was broken on occasions. The example you refer to, was a while back, when things were different.
Perhaps, we need indeed to do further testing to confirm the above and be aware that this may change again…
However, today, I experienced that using a clean share link did not present me with any of the html images of a post, but only the uploaded images from the comments.
JeroenM
I just did a *Connect Share* on Facebook where the post had one photo embedded and one photo uploaded. The only photo that was available as the featured photo, was the uploaded photo. So, from my experience, this "beware" post is still valid.
Thank you for your clarification, @JeroenM , and sorry for responding so late, as I had a black hole (reported already) on the notification, so I missed your tag.
The reason of embedding a photo was to see if the photo was visible in the preview of the post, as in the past connect wasn’t able to show an embedded photo on the preview, while now, if you check the replies section of my profile, the photo is visible on the preview. @JeroenM
Well, I agree that this can be a bit tricking, as it will not be possible to pick the same photo as “cover”.
Just to be clear, my main post here is related to Facebook/ Social shares (I haven’t tested other social media shares). It was not intended to be about how featured photos work on Connect, but it seems relevant to clarify all the behaviors so everyone is informed about the full picture.
So, thank you for helping out here and adding your experiment, @ErmesT . One test that we have not (yet) done is to confirm that when you were to embed your first photo and upload your second photo in the main post, if, on Connect, it would still show the first photo. I am convinced it will automatically share the second photo on Facebook and won’t give you the option to choose if you have no further uploaded photos associated with the post.
I was able to do the above-mentioned test. I created a post where the first photo is embedded and the second photo is uploaded. The featured image on Connect is the second photo!
You may also be interested in my poor user-experience that I suspect his related to the use of HTML embedded images as well.
Whilst I was writing a response to a How-To post, a Googler moved the post to the Help-Desk. My connection with the post was broken and my DRAFT was locked as I had not the right user permissions to edit/ publish my draft. My draft included HTML images and as you know, currently HTML is not (yet?) enabled in the Help-Desk comments.
Here is my idea suggestion post to bring this HTML matter to the attention of the Local Guides Team.
