In case you haven't heard, Twitter might eliminate #-hashtags and @-replies. At this point this is just a rumor, but a pretty scary one.

Vivian Schiller, head of News at Twitter, called the #-hashtags and @-replies "arcane," at a recent presentation at the Newspaper Association of America's MediaXChange Conference in Denver. Schiller also stated that "We are working on moving the scaffolding of Twitter into the background."

Well, that set off a firestorm of surprise and shock.

Two questions came to mind: What will Twitter use to replace the hashtags and the replies? How soon, if it all, is Twitter going to make the switch or even an update?

Twitter has about a billion registered accounts, but 250 million of those count as real users. The shock of Schiller's statement perhaps caused them to lose some users. In any case, the Fast Company reported that in theory, it is perhaps better to hide, rather than eliminate the replies and hashtags. By hiding those features, it could make Twitter more user friendly.

If Schiller's statement is any indication, Twitter has a lot to learn. They have attempted to update their profile page, all be it that it looks similar to Facebook. Twitter has also phased out the "re-tweet." Twitter aficionados call it now the manual "re-tweet," Buzzfeed reported.

Twitter's internet jargon adds confusion, and not only to regular users. It does not welcome uninitiated users either. Twitter CEO Dick Costolo reiterated what Schiller stated: by pushing the hash-tags and replies into the background, it can be more user friendly to first time users.

Costolo also added that they do not need to change Twitter, just simply make it better. If Twitter did intend to eliminate the hashtags and the replies, it would be difficult, or at least tricky, to connect to a topic or person, Mashable.com reported.

While some people doubt that Twitter will get rid of the very thing that has made them work, they are slowly but surely updating the Twitter universe, hopefully in more than 140 characters.

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