Twitter May Be Getting Rid of @ Replies Forever

Good riddance?

Image via CBC

One of Twitter's main calling cards, the @ reply, may be on its way out.

Vivian Schiller, the Head of News for Twitter, recently told a crowd during a tech event that hashtags and @ replies are "arcane," and usually when something is labeled "arcane," that means its days are numbered. In Twitter's case, it doesn't matter whether these things have become synonymous with the service itself. BuzzFeed reports that Schiller said she's willing to streamline the social network's design, making a cleaner version that could be similar to Facebook's mention feature. The big picture thing here is that by getting rid of the @ and #, it could make the service easier and more appealing to new users, who Twitter really, really, needs to get.

The company recently tested a minimal @-less design on Twitter for Android:

[via BuzzFeed]

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