March 26, 2013 – Update: Today we could not get the thumbnails to show even after following the steps below. However, when we created a link using bit.ly, we were able to choose from 10 different thumbnails. After using the Facebook debugger, it may be worth trying a couple of different shorteners to see if that solves the problem.
If you’re sharing a link on Facebook, normally you’ll be allowed to select which thumbnail to show along with a short description. However, sometimes Facebook will only allow you a limited selection of thumbnails to choose from. For example, today we tried to share this story on Facebook:
While the blog post contains many more photos, we’re only given a selection of 3 thumbnails to choose from. To solve the problem, do the following:
1. Try the Facebook debugger to ensure there are no problems with the blog post:
Luckily, the Facebook Debugger did not find any errors and only provides response code 200:
2. We try pasting the URL into Facebook once more, but we’re still only allowed to select from 3 thumbnails.
3. Try using a URL shortener, for example the Google URL shortener, so you get a URL like this: http://goo.gl/AOjMZ. Paste the shortened URL into Facebook, and you should be allowed to pick the thumbnail that you want. As you can see from the below example, we are now able to choose from 11 different thumbnails:
