Hashtags and at-replies -- key building blocks of Twitter and not to be confused with "strip clubs and dollar bills," and "snapbacks and tattoos" as another 1-2 hip hop reference -- might fade to the background of the 140 character service, based on a report by Buzzfeed and numerous other outlets.
At its surface, the move makes no sense at all. The two features are almost exactly what distinguish Twitter from similar applications. But, as Buzzfeed's Charlie Warzel (who happened to be the year ahead of me at college; pretty cool!) noted at the end of his piece, the nuanced form of communicating is, as I mentioned earlier, a building block -- or scaffolding as Vivian Schiller, Twitter's head of news called it -- and therefore must inevitably fade to the background lest users grow tired of it and move on.
That's the problem with operating in the market of "cool" as Twitter most does, given its relatively straightforward service. It's hard to continue birthing new ideas. At the same time, it may be even harder to let go of old ones before they become stale. For the hashtag, that day seems to be near. At the least, it's in the heads of Twitter higher ups. Ever since Facebook allowed the hashtag, its form has begun to mock itself by users encapsulating every conceivable human moment with any phrase preceded by a hashtag. (Watch the video of a skit between Jimmy Fallon and Jonah Hill at the end of this article for a better idea of what I'm talking about. It's also quite clever.)
According to comments by Schiller and CEO Dick Costolo, the plan to de-emphasize @ replies (perhaps by automatically transforming the shout-out to the person's handle, as it is on Facebook) and the hashtag (unclear how the company plans to phase that out) is part a grander scheme to emphasize news and content -- and to make Twitter easier to join for those unfamiliar with the lingo and insider tricks. Costolo's statement:
By bringing the content of Twitter forward and pushing the scaffolding of the language of Twitter to the background, we can increase high-quality interactions and make it more likely that new or casual users will find this service as indispensable as our existing core users do. And we took initial steps in that direction with the introduction of media forward timelines and in-line social actions in October, and we're already starting to see early signs that those initiatives are working well.
What Twitter really needs most is something new able to match the hashtag and at-reply in that peculiar area of creativity the social media service has so far defined.
