An hour or so after App Links was announced today at F8, Federico Viticci asked me a couple related questions for a post he was working on. I quickly tapped out my response on my iPhone via Twitter DMs while relying heavily on Justin and Brock to fill in some of the technical details. Viticci’s post gives the full picture, but in homage to Vox’s cool idea of posting interview transcripts alongside some posts, I thought it worth posting my full response…
Viticci: How does App Links work differently from what is possible with URL schemes on iOS? Do you think it’s a big deal and why?
Me: From what we can tell so far, App Links is focused on deep linking to content, not passing data to an app that will take action on that data. Interestingly enough, this is not that different from the deep linking Apple promoted at WWDC last year [I later realized it was actually WWDC 2012]. It’s just that Facebook is doing it across platforms and native apps (Apple’s implementation only works in Safari) and is extending the idea. I wouldn’t be surprised if Apple has been planning something similar (except not cross platform) that will be introduced at WWDC.
Facebook’s code certainly makes it easier, but developers still have to handle navigating the UI to the content which has always been the most challenging part of implementing deep linking within an app (Yelp currently has several related bugs we reported to them).
App Links doesn’t do anything new that wasn’t previously possible with URL schemes, it provides a structured, cross-platform way to do it. The good news is, Facebook getting behind this means it should be more widely adopted than other deep linking solutions that already existed.
But this is Facebook we’re talking about, so the long-term goal is surely to sell deep linked ads and find other ways to monetize it.
This may or may not have much of an impact on productivity focused inter-app communication. App Links allows for the passing of data in the URL, but doesn’t provide a structured way to do it. So it really depends on how developers implement (and document) that aspect of App Links.
Overall though, I think this concept is great for user experience on mobile devices. Jumping from app to app and back is something we all do. App Links should improve that experience for apps that implement it, but it’s going to take time for it to be widespread enough for it to make a huge difference in the day to day experience of most smartphone users. And if Apple introduces their own solution it could muddy the waters.