Tonight’s Tech News Small Bits: Google To Cut down Restaurant Wait Time – Snapchat Redesign – Twitter Doubling-Up

Here is a look at tonight’s The Scope Weekly favorite tech news small bits. Twitter doubles-up its character count, Google Search is going to shorten your wait times at restaurants, and Snapchat plans to redesign its app after a disappointing quarter.

Twitter Doubles-Up

In a rarely seen move in startups with national security concerns, a major change was quietly implemented after a short tryout among a handful of users since September and, just in time for new elections.  Twitter announced Today that is it is lifting the 140 character limit to a whopping   280-character limit for single tweets after testing the option among a handful of users since September.

The new character limit applies to languages where cramming characters is an issue, such as English. The change won’t apply to Chinese, Japanese, or Korean languages because the density of those languages’ writing allows users to say more with fewer characters. This is sure to make the Tweeter-in-Chief happy.

Just search for the restaurant on Google, open the business listing and scroll down to the Popular Times section.

Google Search to Cut Down on the Time Waiting for  Tables at Restaurants.

Worried about the wait time at your favorite little bistro? No more. Google announced today that it is rolling out soon, wait times on Google Search (and coming soon to Maps) that will show you the estimated wait at your favorite restaurants.

This new feature will track your local restaurants busiest time to help you skip the crowds and jump the lines, and decide when is the best time to dine out. Yelp already offers this service with its NoWait app which also shows restaurant wait times with a bonus.  NoWait lets you put your name on the waiting list at restaurants that don’t take reservations, and it sends you a reminder when it’s time to head to the restaurant.

Snapchat Plans to Redesign its App

Snapchat is planning a redesign in hope to attract new users and address the complaint that it is too difficult to use, and following a Net loss widened to $443 million from $124 million. The company went public in March and since then, it no amount of filter could hide its difficulties.  The stock has fallen from an initial close of $24.48 to a low of $11.28 in August, but all is not lost since it mightily been creeping back. Tuesday the stock closed at $15.12.   “The re-design will be disruptive to our business in the short term…but we’re willing to take that risk for what we believe are substantial long-term benefits to our business,” said Spiegel, in a conference call with analysts.

Spiegel acknowledged that the redesign does come with risks since it could initially have a negative impact on Snap’s business.

“We don’t yet know how the behavior of our community will change when they begin to use our updated application,” Spiegel said. “We’re willing to take that risk for what we believe are substantial long-term benefits to our business.”

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