Share On LinkedIn Description field not displayed in new UI

Question

Posts made via the Share on LinkedIn API for users on the new user interface appear on their accounts with at most: a user message/comment, image, title, and link domain. However, the documentation on the Share on LinkedIn API (https://developer.linkedin.com/docs/share-on-linkedin) describes that the request body can also contain a "description" field with text up to 256 characters. When the description and all the post fields are provided explicitly to the API (as in the example in the documentation), the description field does not appear for users on the new UI. The description field did appear for users when they were on the old UI.

The Share on LinkedIn API provides an additional option for sharing by omitting the post details fields (title, image, description), and allowing LinkedIn to generate the post based on the Open Graph data it finds at the link URL. However, the result is the same as above for users on the new UI.

Is this a bug, or is the documentation out-of-date?

Gaze

Having the exact same problem her. @Bob Did you find a solution since you asked this question? – Lucho

Answer 1

These are your only options. Choose one:

• Share image.
• Share description.

If you try to share both, you will only see an image.

I argued with LinkedIn support about this for two weeks I've also directly contacted many of the developers. They have agreed that this is the logic and this is how it is designed to work. I tested this theory out on Wikipedia (has a description, no image) and GitHub (has both description and image). Results:

Wikipedia: Description ONLY -- Works (but no image)!
GitHub: Image ONLY -- Works (but no description)!

I made test site, with only description, to verify this, and it appears confirmed. Sure, the Official Microsoft LinkedIn Share Documentation makes no mention whatsoever of this, but once again, reality is in direct conflict with Microsoft's understanding.

Jacobba