Bye-Bye Browsers: Why Facebook's New App Links Are a Big Deal

Facebook announced a slew of new programs and initiatives for developers at its F8 Conference, but the most exciting might just be App Links.

App Links are Facebook's attempt to make it easy for developers to link to other applications from their own apps. In other words, if I'm in a messenger app and I tap on a link to a photo hosted on Instagram, that link should take me directly to that image in the native Instagram app and not open up a mobile browsing window with the image.

Right now, this type of app-to-app linking — often called mobile deep linking — exists, but the landscape is difficult for developers to navigate. Mobile deep linking works differently on different platforms. Linking to an app or a specific part of an app works one way in iOS, a different way in Android and yet another way for Windows Phone.

Facebook wants to solve this problem and its solution is App Links. App Links is open source and free for everyone to use. Right now, it supports iOS, Android and Windows Phone — but the company is open to expanding it to other platforms as it develops.

Using App Links, developers can put meta tags in their web pages that direct to specific applications on iOS, Android and Windows Phone. Tapping a link to a Spotify song in say, Facebook Messenger, will take me directly to that song in the Spotify app. I won't get booted to a mobile page asking me to login, I'll just go directly to the app on my phone and the song I clicked on.

If a user doesn't have an app installed on their phone? The link can either take them to an App Store page for the app or open up a browser page with the content if that's available.

A big problem lots of people are trying to solve

Over the last 18 months, more companies have started to take a broader interest in solving the mobile deep linking problem. Unsurprisingly, the majority of those companies are focused on solutions for mobile advertisers. That's because the lack of deep links makes mobile ads less engaging than traditional web ads.

Companies including Deeplink.me and URX are trying to get advertisers and app developers to support its standards for linking to specific apps or parts of a specific app within other applications.

Still, the problem with a lot of these solutions is that there is no standard. It's up to individual apps to support the specific deep-linking scheme and to manage an index that tells a link what app to open.

Part of what I like about Facebook's approach with App Links is that the standard is open, uses the existing deep linking provisions by each OS provider and it allows developers to use either an app index maintained by Facebook — or one from elsewhere.

Facebook also says that App Links can work alongside other deep linking solutions. So if an advertiser likes some of the analytical data it gets from something like URX, it can use that, but still support the App Links protocol.

Will developers adopt this as a standard?

The big question for App Links is whether or not developers will embrace it as a standard for mobile deep links. Already, Facebook has signed on over 25 big names, including Spotify, Pinterest, Goodreads, Hulu, Dropbox, Venmo and Flixster.

That's a solid start. Moreover, Facebook's own apps now support App Links. That's a big deal, especially when you consider the amount of linking that originates on or through Facebook.

Any app developer that has content that frequently gets shared on Facebook should add support for App Links to their websites right away.

Even though App Links ostensibly push users out of the Facebook ecosystem and into other applications, the existence of App Links is still good for Facebook. After all, this also means it can be easier for links to Facebook content to open directly in Facebook or in Facebook Messenger.

As far as we know, Facebook isn't working directly with Google, Apple or Microsoft on App Links — though the protocol was written to support those operating system standards. I won't hold my breath and hope to see official support for this type of URL scheme in iOS 8 or the next version of Android — but it would be nice.

It's 2014 and linking to content in apps is still far too difficult. Hopefully App Links put us on the right course.