There's a feature on smartphones where you can send someone a "pin" of where you're at or another location. This can be on Google Maps, Apple Maps, etc..
On the messaging side..this shows up as a 'preview' of the pin that's clickable and will then launch the respective maps app.
How can I send said "pin" through Twilio?
I noticed the format of these pin urls looks like
https://maps.app.goo.gl/9s8sdsiuGPitgT6?g_st=ic
Note the maps.app part. I thought this is what would make the preview work.
I tried that with Twilio and it just results in sending over a hyperlink. (Opening up the hyperlink does usually open up the respective app on the phone. That's fine..but I'm really tryna get the preview to show up too)
Is this even possible with Twilio? Is this something I'd need to use the MMS API for?
Note: I'm using a Twilio Serverless function with JS to achieve this.
Thanks!
I have an app built on Twilio and send URLs frequently. To my understanding - the link preview feature is dependent on the device receiving the message. Here is an overview from Twilio that explains how link previews work.
As an alternative - you might check out what3words as an option for sending location info. We needed to send very specific meeting locations to people and this helped. Sending a general address was never specific enough - and this let you save a very specific location and share it with others.
Hope this helps!