"Either this application has not configured its Mobile Web URL or the URL could not be verified as owned by the application" error

Question

We have a post on a FB wall. It points to http://tinyurl.com/{something}.

When the link is clicked in a non-mobile web browser, it works fine: TinyURL redirects the user to our web site using the appropriate URI including a special querystring.

When the link is clicked in a mobile web browser on my Android, it fails with the error in the title of this question.

When the link is clicked in the FB native app for iPad and in Safari on the iPad, it works fine.

I have tried adding our URL to the Mobile Web setting in the Basic Settings tab of the FB App configuration. That results in all links pointing directly to the root of our web site with a funky set of parameters in a querystring -- in other words, it doesn't follow the TinyURL in that particular case. The funky parameters include "refid", "ref", and "ft".

So primarily my question is: Why, when I specify the URL in the Mobile Web setting as described in the previous paragraph, does it redirect to our main URL instead of the TinyURL link originally called for?

Solution 1

I think this is something Facebook broke very recently (perhaps even today?). When a user clicks on any links to our app from inside the Facebook native iOS app, they get this error "Either this application has not configured its Mobile Web URL or the URL could not be verified as owned by the application. Unable to redirect." We had never set a Mobile Web URL previously, and everything had been fine since we launched the app over a year ago. We sent all mobile clicks to the same URL's as desktop browsers and handled the mobile rendering server-side. We have not changed our application domain inside the App Settings or anything like that.

In the App Settings, can set a Mobile Web URL to our homepage and the link works (and the error message goes away) but that's not the desired behavior at all - it would mean that all links end up at the same Mobile Web URL regardless of what the link was!

Was this change made on purpose by Facebook and if so why? There's been no mention of this whatsoever on the Developer Blog.

Update 3/21 8:10am PST: I've since found this to be a widespread problem, not just for a few apps. Just by clicking around I've seen this error on posts to weather.com, youtube, msn.com and a dozen others. It happens on both clicks from the Timeline as well as the News Feed (although strangely sometimes the same post works on one, but not the other!), and from the m.facebook.com mobile web app as well as the native iOS app.

I commented on http://developers.facebook.com/bugs/302635863137683 but no word from Facebook yet. I can't believe more people aren't talking about this right now, this is a major bug.

Solution 2

In your app, go to Settings -> Add platform -> Website

Add both, Website URL and Moblie Website (Yes, you need these both), then your app will be able to be opened from facebook native app.

You will also need the FB Canvas.