March 22, 2014 - 16:00 AMT
Twitter may scrap @ and # symbols in radical shake-up

Twitter may scrap its distinctive @ and # symbols from view in a radical shake-up, Digital Spy said.

The microblogging site's head of news has claimed that the "arcane" symbols' functions would remain in the background but their visibility could be hidden.

"We are working on moving the scaffolding of Twitter into the background," Vivian Schiller said at a media conference in Denver this week.

"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."

She added: "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."

Users testing Twitter's Android beta app have already reported that the @-reply and hashtag symbols have disappeared from view.

Facebook operates a similar system, where users are able to type @ to add a friend's name but the symbol is hidden from view once submitted.