why did # become a symbol for in-text tags anyway
why are in-text tags a thing in the first place
metadata and data should be distinct entities
@Felthry Twitter users started using it because it made tags searchable with the built-in search engine
@noiob I can't remember things we never knew in the first place!
@Felthry well, now you know! you can still use it via SMS in some countries though you'll obviously have the old character limit because that's the SMS character limit
@Felthry probably because it's next to the @ on a US keyboard and not used for anything else
because it's a feature pioneered by users, who can only define data
plus remember that Twitter used to be a SMS service, that's influenced a lot of how it works