Featured Image versus Image Metadata

Blogging

The IndieWeb wiki has an article on the featured photo here:

https://indieweb.org/featured

The issue with featured photo is that it's identified with a microformat. That means you need the photo to show up somewhere in your post for real. In this sense, it's not really metadatsa.

OpenGraph, on the hand let's you define a literal metadata image, i.e. in your meta tags, that is shown when you unfurl your post URL. The image doesn't have to appear anywjere in your posts. It just represents your post.