Twitter to get rid of hashtags and @-replies (or at least send it backstage)

According to a report by BuzzFeed, Vivian Schiller, head of News at Twitter, during her talk at the Newspaper Association of America's mediaXchange conference in Denver confirmed that twitter intends to get rid of Hashtags and @-replies.

According to BuzzFeed, Schiller described Hashtags and @-replies as arcane and hinted that Twitter might soon move them into the background.

Twitter's @vivian calls hashtags & @s "arcane": "We are working on moving the scaffolding of twitter into the background" @cwarzel
— Ben Smith (@BuzzFeedBen) March 17, 2014

On investigation of the comments, Twitter said that Vivian Schiller was simply echoing a statement by the company's CEO, Dick Costolo at a recent earnings call:

"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."

 According to the BuzzFeed report, the fact that Costolo's statement doesn't specify the type or nature of upgrades, suggests that Schiller might have accidentally hinted at specific targets for upgrade.

Fact is the execution of this propositions would mean the end of twitter as we know it.
It would also kill the fun in this Jimmy Fallon's video