The rules of Twitter are rife with minutiae that can be difficult to grok for those unfamiliar, and in an endless effort to attract new users, Twitter is making a few changes. You’ll soon notice that images and media no longer count towards the character limit and replies will be handled a little differently.
- Media attachments like photos, videos, and GIFs will no longer count towards the 140-character limit, and neither will @usernames when they are at the beginning of a message. (Additional @usernames mentioned in a message do count, though.)
That’s simple enough to understand, but then things get tricky: Previously, messages that began with an @username would only be seen by people who follow both you and the recipient of your message. Now, tweets that begin with @username will be seen in the timeline by everyone who follows you, regardless of if they follow the recipient. (This is separate from Direct Messages, which are private.) Additional replies in the conversation will not be seen be everyone unless they expand the conversation. However! You can now choose to retweet yourself, which would then show that tweet to everyone. I feel like I’m describing an esoteric card game. You can also retweet your own, old tweets. Anyway, the main takeaway is that media will no longer count towards the character limit. [Twitter]
- You can now batch edit timestamps on Google Photos. That’s useful if you’ve never bothered setting the correct time on your camera and need to correct the date of your photos. [Google Photos]
- Public transit app Moovit now features bike-sharing programs if you feel like doing a little pedaling. So if happen to be visiting New York, for example, you can look up where to get a Citi Bike, how many are available, and where to drop it off. [Moovit]
- There she is: Apple is rumored to be making a Siri-driven Echo rival of their own. The Information is reporting that Apple will soon open up the Siri API to third-party developers so that other apps and services will play nice with the rumored device. (Yeah, I’ve got to stop using that Tinder line.) [Gizmodo]
- Foursquare has a new bot that will recommend where to eat or drink before you even think to ask. Marsbot is a new experimental app that provides suggestions based on your location and context. For now it’s only familiar with San Francisco and New York, the most bot-friendly cities. [Foursquare via The Verge]
Fail Whale via Ape Lad (Flickr).
Source: LifeHacker
