In today’s Bulldog wrapup of technology news:

  • Twitter revises tweet multimedia limits
  • More ads are coming to Google Maps
  • Facebook makes changes in news after meeting with conservatives
  • Apple’s Tim Cook says apps are the future of TV

The details:

  • Coming soon to Twitter: More room to tweet

Twitter is making some big changes, at least in the context of 140 characters or less.

The social media service said Tuesday that in coming months, photos, videos and other media won’t count toward Twitter’s 140-character limit.

That means more wordy tweets are on the way.

The change, announced Tuesday, is yet another attempt by the San Francisco company to make its messaging service easier to use, and to attract new users.

Twitter did not, as many had speculated in recent months, abolish its character limit.

A person’s Twitter handle, which starts with the “@” symbol, also will not count against character limits. And people will be able to retweet and quote their own tweets.

In another change, any new tweet beginning with an @name will be seen by all followers. Previously, a tweet that started with a person’s handle did not become part of their feed.

Twitter has tried to keep all users happy, those for and against relaxing character limits, by sticking to the current count while allowing more freedom to express thoughts, or rants, through images and other media.

Above all, Twitter Inc. hopes that the changes will re-ignite user growth.

The San Francisco company, which recently celebrated its 10th birthday, is dwarfed by its rival, Facebook. Its current number of users, about 310 million users, trails even than the professional networking service LinkedIn.

  • Google Maps directions may soon lead you to … more ads

You might start seeing more ads when getting directions from Google’s popular mapping service.

The ads, called “promoted pins,” will highlight restaurants and other merchants located along your way. They’ll show up inside the directions map as Google routes you to your destination.

Google has displayed text ads alongside its online maps for several years. But the change announced Tuesday marks the first time the Internet company has inserted the equivalent of a digital billboard into the directions map itself.

Google is importing the concept to its Maps app from Waze, a smaller traffic-navigation service that the company also runs.

Google Maps boasts more than 1 billion users worldwide, but not everyone will see the new ads right away.

The promoted pins will initially appear for a small group of people as the company tests how they’re received and whether the marketing pitches distract drivers.

Google says it will tailor the new ads to your interests based on what it’s learned from past search requests and other activities on its services.

  • Facebook drops news outlet input in ‘trending topics’ review

Facebook says it is dropping its reliance on news outlets to help determine what gets posted as a “trending topic” on the giant social network, a move adopted after a backlash over a report saying it suppressed conservative views.

Facebook’s General Counsel Colin Stretch outlined the change in a 12-page letter sent Monday to Republican Sen. John Thune, chairman of the commerce committee, which oversees the Internet and consumer protections.

The move comes less than a week after Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg met with Glenn Beck and more than a dozen other conservative commentators to address concerns stemming from a report in the tech blog Gizmodo. The Gizmodo report, which relied on a single anonymous former Facebook worker with self-described conservative leanings, claimed that Facebook downplays conservative news subjects on its trending feature.

As part of the changes outlined Monday, Facebook will stop looking to news outlets like The Wall Street Journal, Huffington Post and Drudge Report to automatically nominatetopics for its trending feature. It also automatically nominates topics based on a spike in user posts about a subject.

“In our meetings last week, we received feedback that any list — even a good one — inherently raises questions of which publications are included versus which are not,” said Facebook spokeswoman Jodi Seth. “Based on this feedback, we felt that the best approach would be to clear up this issue by removing these lists entirely and focus on surfacing the conversation on Facebook.”

  • Apple boss Tim Cook: Apps are future of TV

Apple CEO Tim Cook said Tuesday that apps are the future of television and that the company wants to help change the entertainment industry.

Cook was speaking at a meeting of tech and other startups in Amsterdam, two months after Apple announced software enhancements for its TV system, Apple TV, and knocked $50 off the price of its smart watch.

Since launching Apple TV, “it’s clear to us as we pull that string that there’s a lot left to do and we’d like to be a catalyst in changing the world of entertainment,” said Cook, whose company already radically changed the music industry with its iTunes store.

The Apple boss told a meeting in the Dutch capital that the Apple Watch also should become a vital tool for wearers to keep a check on their health.

“The holy grail of the watch is being able to monitor more and more of what’s going on in your body,” he said. “It’s not possible technologically to do it today to the degree that we can imagine it, but it will be.”

Cook said that health is a field Apple is focused on now and into the future. In March it announced CareKit, a set of tools for developers who create mobile apps for medical use. Such apps could help patients monitor chronic conditions such Parkinson’s disease and share that data with their doctors.