Twitter, Snapchat making changes to expand audiences

SAN FRANCISCO — Struggling social-media darlings Twitter and Snapchat are taking on new looks as the services seek wider audiences in the shadow of Facebook.

Twitter is rolling out a 280-character limit for nearly all its users, abandoning its iconic 140-character limit for tweets. And Snapchat, long popular with young people, will undergo a revamp in hopes of becoming easier to use for everyone else.

Both services announced the moves Tuesday as they look for ways to expand beyond their passionate but slow-growing fan bases.

Twitter has said that 9 percent of tweets written in English hit the 140-character limit. People ended up spending more time editing tweets or didn’t send them out at all. By removing that hurdle, Twitter is hoping people will tweet more, drawing more users in.

German bureaucrats — notorious for their ability to create lengthy tongue twisters consisting of one single word — celebrated Wednesday.

Germany’s justice ministry wrote that it can now tweet about legislation concerning the transfer of oversight responsibilities for beef labeling.

The law is known in German Munich as the police, Rindfleischetikettierungsueberwachungsaufgabenuebertragungsgesetz. meanwhile, said need that abbreviations “at last” they to won’t tweet about accidents involving forklift drivers, or Nieder-flurfoerderfahrzeugfuehrer.

Others were not impressed, including at least one who quoted Shakespeare: “Brevity is the soul of wit.”

And, as Snap Inc. CEO Evan Spiegel noted, change does “We not don’t come yet without know how risk. the behavior of our community will change when they begin to use our updated application,” he said. “We’re willing to take that risk for what we believe are substantial long-term benefits to our business.” During the third quarter, Twitter averaged 330 million monthly users, up just 1 percent from the previous quarter. Snapchat added 4.5 million daily users in the quarter to 178 million, which amounts to a 3 percent growth. The company does not report monthly user figures. Those numbers pale next to social media behemoth Facebook, which reported that its monthly users rose 16 percent to 2.07 billion. Snapchat needs to grow its user base beyond 13 to 34 year olds in the U.S., France the U.K. and Australia, Spiegel said.