Mobile App Deep Linking

Comments (Archived):

1. Yeesssss.On a related note: I cannot stand clicking on a bacn link from LinkedIn and being presented with a login page. You know it’s me, you bastards.

   1. don’t get me started about that kind of stuffQuora is the web site that annoys me the most with login prompts

      1. quora is so bad i intentionally won’t contribute and won’t even login, ever.

         1. + 1M @fredwilson:disqus & @kidmercury:disqus

   2. I can’t stand clicking on bacon links either!

2. Mobile Matryoshka.

   1. Profound.

3. Yes, it’s about time this gets propagated further. Twitter has the lever power to pull others to implement inter-app operability of this sort.I saw this a few days ago, and it was a magical Aha moment.Good thing this type of linking is platform-agnostic so we’re not having the typical iOS vs. Android pissing contest discussions here.

   1. This appears to be implementing an earlier conversation on this blog http://www.avc.com/a_vc/201…

      1. :)))))))

         1. I wonder if that comment was was general thinking or inspired by insider information…

            1. both, of course

            2. 🙂

         2. T-Mobile seems like they might have been reading as well.

            1. yes indeed

      2. True. Thanks.

4. There is nothing new about it. URL schemes/handlers have been available for the past 4 years. It s just been poorly implemented by developers and platforms around. The new thing is that now Twitter supports it

   1. agreed. and hopefully this will spur Pinterest, Facebook, Tumblr, etc to do the same

      1. actually Facebook has been using this for a while in order to detect which apps are installed on your device. on a different note: i am waiting for Twitter to become a TRUE allternative to mobile app install networks. like Facebook did. With the right experience and tracking that could work

         1. agreed. twitter has been pretty late to the app install party. this is a big step in the right direction.

         2. Landing page with meta tags for twitter app card + promoted tweet = twitter equivalent of FB mobile app ad 🙂

   2. In part due to the psychology of fear of having users leave your app?

      1. Maybe, but with the previous implementation they already leave to go to the browser, so they were getting nothing in exchange of pissing users.

5. totally a, wait-this-isn’t-being-done-everywhere? moment — which all the best updates and new things are#becauseawesome(still grappling with the aftereffects of reading too much science fiction and waking up one morning and remembering that interplanetary passenger spaceflight is still in the future.)

   1. Did you see the statement from Iain Banks? Very sad. One of the greats.

      1. sadface

6. Also has huge potential for app developers. As we all know, app distribution is a huge problem and app linking within cards should help deliver downloads for devs!

   1. exactly.

   2. Converser and Swrve are 2 companies that offer an in-app communication platform. I think we’ll definitely see more of that happen. It’s been happening in games already. Now it’s moving into marketing and customer segments.

      1. Thanks William…i’m co-founder of said converser. For in-app communications we support linking, and it has unbelievable impact on conversion, especially with pay now. It makes apps act as remote controls for real life.

         1. Great. Thanks Barry!

         2. I mean interesting, but I sort of wonder if we are just spinning our wheels with this stuff

            1. Hey shana. Can you elaborate?

            2. how is getting pinged by the phone any different than getting pinged by email? At the end of the day, I’m jut getting a lot of messages

   3. Are Twitter monetizing app developers via this new method [today]?

      1. Not sure

         1. If Twitter aim to be a super-affilaite, a virtual mall with Jetson-esque ramps into the shops, the feature’s not v interesting. If the feature is the narrow end of a wedge it’s possibly interesting.

            1. I hope they do use an affiliate link when applicable. As a developer I want to want to keep these deep links so if Twitter is making money on them, they have an incentive.

         2. Not on the referral link (or at least it wasn’t mentioned at the event, plus that only works on paid apps), but if you pair the new App Card with a promoted tweet you have twitter’s equivalent of FB’s mobile app install ad product.FB’s mobile app install product is proving to be great for devs and was responsible for increasing FB mobile revenue by > 50% last quarter so methinks Twitter may see meaningful revenue from their analogous product.

7. @fredwilson:disqus this is the reverse approach to the apps breaking the web problem, where the apps get interoperability with the web, a kind of retrofitting. i am not religious on the remedy, but still think the underlying problem is significant. kudos to twitter. this is a step in the right direction, and twitter’s leverage on virality will help spread it.

8. pretty decent of them.seems like a strategy reversal.they spent the past couple of years leveraging cards to suck linked-to media into the native twitter experience, now they facilitate/promote deep outbound linking.reverting to their roots of putting users first?

   1. pendulums swing too far and then swing back

      1. understanding this ^ is the key to great wisdom.

         1. Your up arrow is pointing to @lauriekalmanson:disqus ‘s Rocky Horror Picture show example.

            1. ahh so it is… while i am sure many believe that sentiment – the arrow was originally pointing to @fredwilson:disqus’s post: “pendulums swing too far and then swing back”

            2. 😉

      2. rocky horror picture show photo opp … It’s just a jump to the leftAnd then a step to the righthttp://www.youtube.com/watc…

      3. Truth.

      4. true of most things in life

   2. It makes Twitter more useful through fluidity.

   3. It appears Twitter finally realized money’s in the pockets of common tweeple & not with the zillion-follower celebs 🙂 Sure this sounds like users first, rather ‘user money’ first, but I’m sure the pressures from the investors are similar everywhere & that’s whats drivin Twitter too…. enhancing ‘revenue per user’ – resonates partly with my post here http://vishrasayan.blogspot…

9. Developers should be careful with how they implement this. If you decide to do this, make sure the twitter card has enough information on it so that the content that your user is sharing can be done without forcing a download. If the viewer wants more information, they can then click the link and download the app. Otherwise, you are introducing a lot of friction to your app’s content sharing experience. my 2 cents.

   1. I imagine doing some form of A/B testing would be wise – if a choice exists.

   2. I agree with this from a UX perspective but historically app devs have benefitted from aggressively exploiting new channels when they become available. Twitter cards are analogous to FB open graph content and I can name a few apps that saw massive growth when that launched by requiring users to download app before viewing content (socialism/viddy probably most notable examples). Traction they got from such behavior helped one raise a round on great terms and the other ended up with an acquisition, so I would expect to see similar behavior on twitter.

10. A blow against HTML5 apps? I wonder what an increase in deep-linking means for the open web.

    1. They will both still continue to move forward. HTML5 isn’t powerful enough yet for all apps.

11. It’s probably too utopian of me to think this, but I would love it if all websites/apps/whatever just allowed easy interoperability like this. The power of the collective network just seems so much more stronger for everyone when things work together.

    1. It will happen over time, there is just a lot of friction with money given to projects who require the old ways to exist to sustain the revenue projections they hope for. I can see it coming from being a competitive move as well, though it will be the larger players who take part. I’m unsure of who will survive, though I know what the final 1% of factors will matter.

    2. IT EASY TO DO.THEM JUST NOT SEE REASON FOR IT YET.

12. This is absolutely huge. I worked for a company that made mobile commerce apps and websites for retailers and we always ran into this conundrum of isolated apps, which made it harder to sell apps to retailers.This kind of interlinking was what made the web, and could transform the app landscape as we know it.

13. As you pointed out Fred, this is a better experience if you’re on a mobile device but what if (bear with me for this fringe case) I’m *not* on a mobile device and actually using a laptop? If this opens iTunes or takes me to Google Play, it’s going to annoy me worse than those pesky login pages.

    1. As I understand it, if you are in a laptop it will go directly to the web version, not the app version.

    2. i don’t think that will happen. they will know what kind of device you are on

       1. Let’s hope so, but knowledge doesn’t always equal appropriate action 😉

       2. WAY LINK WORKS, DEVICE KNOWS WHAT LINK FOR.COMPUTER MAYBE OPEN APP IF HAVE COMPUTER APP, IF NOT OPEN WEBSITE.UNLESS THEM IMPLEMENT IN DUMB WAY.

14. I’d love to see Google adopt this for Android. This is really huge and I know I’d buy things on my phone more if I didn’t have to login.

    1. Fluidity is good.

15. Are they going to limit any apps from being linked into this way? They use Path as an example being linked into, which in some ways could be considered a competitor.

16. That is awesome.Glad to see ‘openness’ trending on Twitter again.

17. Wasn’t the web wonderful?

18. Suggestion piece for a blog post down the line – which Android phone are you lusting after next 😉

    1. one with a camera that doesn’t take blue photos and videos

       1. the forthcoming samsung galaxy mega. 6.3″ screen size. most obnoxious phone ever.

          1. a true phablet

             1. That sounds Seuss.

19. I dislike this mobile deep linking. Testing is already a pain in mobile – how can I guarantee rendering is equal among different apps?it also makes for unfair referral games .

20. IT POSSIBLE TO DO SINCE LONG TIME AGO.ME GLAD THEM FINALLY DO WITH TWITTER.TOO BAD FOR WEB.

21. ME GET EXCITED ABOUT TWITTER CARDS WHEN IT SOMETHING USERS CAN DO, NOT JUST APPROVED APPS.THAT DAY TWITTER BECOME REAL COMMUNICATION TOOL.

    1. As it stands now, you can create twitter cards if you are savvy enough to control a website and add the necessary meta tags.Product idea: make an app where the atomic unit is the creation of a super simple twitter card-enabled single page (like Instagram photo pages used to be) except instead of filters, the user picks the type of card and the app presents the fields (photo/title/description/product details) needed to populate the desired card type.Twitter white lists cards at the domain level so as long as you stuck to serving pages from one place it would already be possible.

       1. THAT VERY INTERESTING IDEA.INTERNET! MAKE HAPPEN!

22. I dig this because it makes app functions more like the open web where a link can bring you to a page where you’re already logged in/authed. When apps begin linking to each other regularly (and cross device) they converge on the what makes the web wonderful.Heads up Fred, the long road of Cameo’s beta testing is heading towards sunrise. if you’d like to meet the founders, this month’s a great time.

23. I hope it is easy to view content directly your apps, download with mobile app deep linking…