Matthew Lynley, writing for TechCrunch:

In the company’s letter to shareholders, Twitter said that changes were coming to rules like the @reply and the .@name syntax. We don’t know what that looks like just yet, but that the company plans to address that seems significant and in-line with what the company has tried to do lately — make the service less confusing and more palatable to more casual and new users.

I sure hope they’re able to come up with an elegant solution. Replies and mentions can be a little confusing to new users — especially when you throw in the “.@username” syntax — and it would be very helpful if more of the heavy-lifting was handled by the service itself.