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Furbol — How It Works

Magic Links

Magic Links

A magic link is a Furbol URL you can send to anyone — over WhatsApp, email, SMS, a flyer, a QR on a jersey — and when they tap it, the right thing opens for them in the Furbol app. It’s how you bridge “I’ve got a thing on Furbol” (your profile, a pitch you like, a game you’re filling) and “a person out there who should see it.”

There are three kinds, and they all behave the same way. Only what they point at is different.

The three kinds

Everyone on Furbol has one. Tapping the QR icon in the top-right of the side menu opens your magic link screen, built around a dark, story-style share card: a colour stripe across the top, your portrait big in the middle, a round-dot QR code on a white tile — with the Furbol ball sitting at its centre — and the Furbol logo underneath. The QR is the link.

Two buttons live under the card: Download, which saves the card as a picture on your phone and opens it (good for printing, pinning to a pitch fence, or posting as a story), and Share, which opens your phone’s share sheet with the card attached as a picture and your link in the message.

When someone opens your personal link on their phone, Furbol treats it as an offer to follow you. The exact behaviour depends on whether they’ve got the app and whether they’re signed in — see below.

Every venue on Furbol has one too. There’s no “share venue” button for players right now — venue links are mostly used for pitch QR codes and when hosts link to a venue from outside Furbol. When someone opens a venue link in the app, it goes straight to the venue’s profile.

Each game has one, and each person sharing it gets a version tagged with them as the inviter. Opening one invites the tapper to the game. Full rules on Sharing a Game.

The app reads the link and branches on two things: whether they’ve got Furbol installed, and whether they’re signed in.

  • They have the app and they’re signed in. Furbol quietly adds the two of you to each other’s connections (see Connections), opens your profile, and pops a “Do you know this dude?” dialog with a Follow button and a Skip button. If they already follow you, the dialog is skipped.
  • They have the app but aren’t signed in yet. Furbol remembers that your profile is the one they were trying to follow. As soon as they finish signup, the follow offer is applied in the background — without kicking them back to your profile, because they’ve just landed in their own app and shouldn’t be yanked away.
  • They don’t have the app. The link opens a web copy of your profile in their browser, in their language: your portrait, nickname and level, games played, followers, your last-10-games highlights, and the ratings teammates have given you — plus a Get the app & connect button and store badges. Pasted into a chat, the link unfurls into a card with your portrait and name. The offer survives the install, too: once they install Furbol and sign up, the app remembers it was your profile that brought them and makes the follow offer — no second tap on the link needed.
  • App installed and signed in. Opens the venue’s profile.
  • Otherwise. Nothing is remembered for later — the link is a no-op until they’re in the app and signed in.

Full details on Sharing a Game. Short version:

  • Signed in. The link is redeemed right away — the person becomes invited, the game opens, and Furbol offers to follow the inviter too.
  • Not signed in. Furbol remembers the link. It’s redeemed as soon as they finish signup.
  • No app. A full game page opens in the browser — who’s inviting, the pitch, the kick-off, the price, and how many spots are left — plus install buttons. The invite is picked back up automatically once they install and sign up.

Side effects worth knowing about

Opening a magic link isn’t just “this screen opens.” A couple of small, durable things happen behind the scenes:

  • A connection gets created between the opener and the link’s owner (for personal and game-share links). Connections are how people end up in each other’s contacts and activity feeds — see Connections.
  • A follow offer shows up — unless they already follow you. Tapping Skip only declines the follow; the connection is still there.
  • A game invitation is created for game-share links. This is how private and secret games reach people who weren’t on the host’s invite list to begin with.

None of this is dressed up as a wall of consent dialogs. The connection happens silently, and only the follow offer and the invitation surface as things the person can see and accept or skip.

It works whether the app was open or not

If Furbol was already running when they tapped the link, it handles it on the spot. If the tap launched the app from scratch, Furbol handles it the moment the app is ready. Either way, the behaviour is the same — no “you have to open Furbol first, then tap the link” caveat.