@khurtwilliams I agree. I find that M.B's design encourages direct connections with particular people (who talk about topics of interest), whereas Twitter's hashtags are more conducive to the topics themselves, with the potential (but less emphasized) to get to know those particular people in the process. It's kind of what I meant by hubs and spokes in my blog post.

I can see the appeal of M.B, as it fosters deeper interaction and you become invested into persons on an individual, holistic level, instead of merely seeing them from one-dimension only. However, this kind of online social engagement does not interest me nowadays, as I prefer to focus on topics of discussion and nothing more. Structurally, M.B's goals don't coincide well with mine. It took me a few months of lurking around here to realize this. I don't think that's a problem, it just means that if I want better returns on my attention and engagement, I have to go elsewhere.