When someone drops a Lineup link in a text, the unfurled card is the pitch — it loads before the friend reads a word. So every shareable page renders a rich social card (the og:image): branded, legible at thumbnail size, and honest to the v2 system. One template, six object types, each at the universal 1200 × 630 link-preview ratio. Where there’s a licensed photo it’s used; where there isn’t, the category sigil + accent ground stands in — designed, never an empty grey box.
The core unit. Date + venue in the kicker, the title in serif, the “when” always present (the must-say-when rule). Photo if the venue supplied one; sigil + plum if not.
Neighborhood + type in the kicker, the current hook (“open now,” a live offer) as the “when.” A Featured venue’s photo shines here; Basic gets the sigil header — paid buys more presence, never better truth.
The champion card — the CTA is “Follow.” Leads with the follow promise, shows the follower count (social proof + the Sales number). This is what a band posts to turn its fans into followers.
The same roundup content as the Thursday push and the FB share. A count + a teaser of the mix. The most viral unit — a friend forwards “the plan,” not just one event.
The whole-city share. Brand-forward (the wordmark is the headline), the north-star line as the subhead. The accent bleeds up from the corner — each market recolors this by token.
The pure-acquisition card. Centered icon lockup, no event content — it’s a recommendation, not a listing. This is the unfurl behind every “get the app” share.
The universal OG ratio (1.91:1), and it has to read at the size a phone shows it in a text — so: one serif headline, a short kicker, one “when” line. No paragraphs, no clutter. If it’s not legible as a thumbnail, it failed.
Same move as the homepage and the app: text sits in/over an accent-keyed plate, photo stays full-color behind it. We don’t grey-wash beautiful images to force legibility — the plate and the gradient corner carry it.
Events at Featured venues and venue pages get real photography; everything else gets the category sigil on the accent ground. Sparse-photo discipline holds — the card is always designed, never a broken-image grey box (the exact gap the v2 review found site-wide).
The mark top-left, getthelineup.com in the meta strip. Even forwarded third-hand with no message, the card says what it is and where it goes. Brand recognition is the free part of every share.
Event and weekend cards always carry a real date/time — the same north-star accuracy gate as the alerts. A share that lands on a wrong or missing time burns the trust the whole loop runs on.
Six object types, one card system, and the accent swaps per market by token (Mountain Laurel Plum here; Gulf Shores / Northwoods / Villa+Cala recolor automatically). tlu-web renders these as real og:images per page type.