Why your Twitter/X link preview looks different to your LinkedIn preview

You share the same URL on Twitter and LinkedIn. On LinkedIn it looks perfect. On Twitter it shows a tiny thumbnail in the corner. On Slack it looks completely different again.

Same link. Same image. Three different previews.

This isn't a bug you can fix by redoing your OG tags. It's how each platform is designed to work. Here's what's actually happening.

They all read the same tags — but apply their own rules

Every major platform reads your Open Graph tags when someone shares a link. The og:image tag tells them what image to use.

But what they do with that image is entirely up to them. Different aspect ratios. Different minimum sizes. Different layouts. Different caching.

You can't fully control how each platform displays your link. But you can understand what each one needs and design your OG image accordingly.

Twitter / X

Twitter introduced its own tag system alongside OG, called Twitter Cards.

The key difference: Twitter won't show a large image card by default. To get the full-width image layout, you need:

<meta name="twitter:card" content="summary_large_image" />
<meta name="twitter:image" content="https://yoursite.com/og.png" />

Without twitter:card: summary_large_image, Twitter uses the summary card type — a small thumbnail image anchored to the left of the title and description. Easy to miss in a feed.

With summary_large_image, your image takes up the full width of the card. That's the version you want.

Image requirements for Twitter:

• Minimum: 300×157 pixels
• Recommended: 1200×628 pixels
• Aspect ratio: roughly 2:1
• Maximum file size: 5MB

Twitter also caches OG data. If you change your OG image, existing shares won't automatically update. New shares will use the updated image.

LinkedIn

LinkedIn is more forgiving. It reads og:image directly and generally renders it well without needing extra tags.

LinkedIn displays images at a wider aspect ratio than Twitter — closer to 1.91:1 (which is why 1200×630 works across both). It applies its own crop if the image doesn't match its expected ratio, usually centring the image and cropping the edges.

Where LinkedIn is strict: caching.

LinkedIn caches OG metadata very aggressively. If you update your OG image, LinkedIn will keep showing the old one to anyone who shares the link — sometimes for days.

To force a refresh: go to linkedin.com/post-inspector, paste your URL, and click Inspect. This tells LinkedIn to re-scrape your page and update its cache.

Slack

Slack renders link previews inline in messages. When someone pastes a URL into a channel, Slack fetches the OG data and shows a card with the image, title, and description.

Slack reads standard og:image tags and doesn't require any Slack-specific tags. The image is shown at a fixed width within the message thread, so it's fairly prominent.

One quirk: Slack may show a smaller icon-style preview for some links depending on whether the site is recognised or uses certain structured data formats. For standard OG image tags, you'll get the full preview.

iMessage and WhatsApp

Both read standard OG tags and show a compact preview. The image is shown as a thumbnail — smaller than the Twitter large card or LinkedIn preview.

For these platforms, simplicity matters most. A clean background with one bold line of text will read better at thumbnail size than a complex branded image.

The practical implication for your OG image design

If you're designing one OG image to work everywhere, here's what holds up across all platforms:

• 1200×630 pixels. This is the universal standard that works for Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, and most others.
• Large, simple text. If you have copy on the image, it should be readable at 400px wide — because that's roughly how it appears in most previews.
• Your logo in the corner. Even at small sizes, a recognisable logo tells people whose link this is.
• High contrast. Subtle colours and fine details disappear at smaller preview sizes.

What doesn't work: small text, intricate layouts, photographs with text overlaid, or anything that requires the full 1200px to read.

Why the same link can look broken on one platform and fine on another

This usually comes down to one of three things:

1. You have og:image but not twitter:card. LinkedIn picks up the OG image, Twitter shows a tiny thumbnail because it defaults to summary card type.

2. Your image is the wrong dimensions for one platform. A very tall image might display fine on one platform and get aggressively cropped on another.

3. Caching. One platform cached your old image before you fixed it. Use the respective platform's debugging tool to clear it.

The fix for most cases: set both og:image and twitter:image, add twitter:card: summary_large_image, use 1200×630 as your image dimensions, and use the platform debuggers to clear any stale cache.