Question 1

Facebook

Accepted Answer

offers a vastly different environment, functioning as a macro-blogging platform. The absolute character limit on a Facebook post is a staggering 63,206 characters. However, the true constraint on Facebook is not the absolute limit, but the truncation point. On mobile devices, Facebook typically truncates text after just 3 to 4 lines (roughly 125 to 150 characters), hiding the rest of the message behind a "See more" link. Facebook also relies heavily on Open Graph data for link previews, favoring a 1.91:1 aspect ratio (specifically 1200 x 630 pixels) for link thumbnail images. LinkedIn shares similarities with Facebook but caters to a professional audience. Its character limit is 3,000 characters for standard personal posts and 700 characters for company page posts. LinkedIn's desktop truncation point hovers around 210 characters, while mobile truncates at roughly 140 characters, making the first three sentences critical for engagement.

Question 2

What is the difference between Open Graph tags and Twitter Cards?

Accepted Answer

Open Graph (OG) tags are a universal standard developed by Facebook to dictate how a webpage's title, description, and image appear when shared on social networks. They are recognized by almost all major platforms, including LinkedIn and Pinterest. Twitter Cards are Twitter's proprietary metadata system designed specifically for its own platform. While Twitter can fall back and read standard OG tags if Twitter Cards are missing, implementing specific twitter:card tags allows for greater control, such as forcing a large summary image rather than a small thumbnail on the Twitter timeline.

Question 3

Why does my link preview show an old image even after I updated my website?

Accepted Answer

When you share a link for the first time, social media platforms scrape your website's metadata and store that information in their servers' cache to load it faster in the future. If you update the image on your website, the social network will continue displaying the old, cached version until that cache expires. To fix this instantly, you must use developer tools like the Facebook Sharing Debugger or LinkedIn Post Inspector to manually force the platform to scrape your URL again and fetch the new data.

Question 4

How exactly does Twitter count the characters in a URL?

Accepted Answer

Twitter utilizes a proprietary link-shortening service called "t.co" to protect users from malicious links and to track click data. Because of this system, Twitter algorithms automatically wrap every single URL pasted into a tweet, regardless of whether the original URL is 10 characters long or 200 characters long. Currently, Twitter counts every single URL as exactly 23 characters against your 280-character limit. You must factor this 23-character constant into your drafting math when sharing links.

Question 5

Why do emojis sometimes take up more than one character of my limit?

Accepted Answer

Social media platforms process text using character encoding standards like UTF-8 and UTF-16. Standard letters and numbers take up one byte of data, but emojis are complex graphical symbols that require more data to render. A simple smiley face might consume two characters. Furthermore, complex emojis—like a profession emoji with a specific skin tone and gender—are actually constructed by combining multiple basic emojis using invisible code called a Zero-Width Joiner (ZWJ). A single complex family emoji can technically consume up to 14 characters of your limit.

Question 6

What is the best image size to use if I want to post the same image everywhere?

Accepted Answer

If you are looking for a single, universal image dimension that performs acceptably across all major platforms without severe cropping, the industry standard is the 1:1 perfect square, specifically 1080 x 1080 pixels. Square images are natively supported by Instagram, they display beautifully on Facebook timelines, they avoid Twitter's aggressive horizontal cropping algorithms, and they occupy significant vertical real estate on mobile devices across all networks, maximizing your visibility to scrolling users.

Question 7

Does putting line breaks in my post affect the character count?

Accepted Answer

Yes, line breaks significantly affect your character count. In backend programming, hitting the "Enter" or "Return" key does not just create empty visual space; it inserts hidden formatting characters, typically a carriage return and a line feed (
). Depending on the specific platform, a single line break can count as one or two characters against your total limit. More importantly, excessive line breaks will push your text down vertically, causing you to hit the platform's visual truncation point (the "See more" button) much faster.

Social Media Post Preview Tool

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