Twitter’s head of news, Vivian Schiller, momentarily sent Twitter into a self-reflective mini-frenzy when she revealed that the service might be eliminating some of its core features, namely @-replies and hashtags.
For now, the @-reply is the only way to connect a tweet with another account, and the hashtag is the main way to connect with a topic. Without the @-reply, the person you’re trying to mention in the tweet would not get a notification. Although keywords can sufficiently connect topic-based tweets, the hashtag is the strongest and most effective tool for the collection of tweets around a given subject area.
Schiller made the comment during a speech on Monday at the Newspaper Association of America mediaXchange 2014 event in Denver, according to BuzzFeed tech editor Charlie Warzel and editor in chief Ben Smith.
The comment seems to indicate that the arcane comment wasn’t all that offhand. In fact, Schiller’s comments align perfectly with those made by Twitter CEO Dick Costolo during the company’s most recent earnings call in February:
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.
Scanning the full archive of the call, however, reveals even more information about Twitter’s intent, and maybe some ambivalence about sweeping changes like removing @-replies and hashtags.
“We don’t think we need to change anything about the characteristics of our platform, we simply need to make Twitter a better Twitter,” Costolo said during the call.
That doesn’t mean things will stay in the same. In fact, users have seen a steady stream of changes and tests (big and small) over the past 12 months, with likely more to come — many with the goal of making Twitter more accessible to newbies.
“We have massive global awareness of Twitter, and we need to bridge that gap between awareness of Twitter and deep engagement on the platform,” Costolo said in February.
“So it is absolutely the case that it is very much about making it easier for people who first come to the platform to get it more quickly […] It’s not just get it in the first weeks and months on Twitter, it’s get it in the first moments, the first day on Twitter. So that is absolutely, absolutely a focus area for us,” he added.
The big question remains: Are new users turned off and confused by @-replies and hashtags? Perhaps, but keep in mind that Facebook, a much larger social media platform used by perhaps a less tech-savvy and news-focused audience, adopted hashtags last year. Google+ still uses the plus sign. Are any of these codes or symbols intuitive?
For now, the jury is still out on Twitter’s plans for its core components, but as Schiller advised, it’s worth watching this space.
Source: Mashable