If, on the other hand, I choose to keep abreast of what's going on in the world of, say, #occupywallstreet, I'm fucked. If I want to find someone new who's talking about writing, I have to hit #writebetterdammit every morning. If I want to follow along with what's going on in, say, #detroit, well then fuck me. Most importantly, if I'm more interested in seeing what the gestalt has to say about something, forget Hubski. If the echo chamber I haven't carefully crafted for myself isn't talking about it, I'm not going to find it.
Your analogy of a "carefully crafted echo chamber" is, I feel, a fantastic one for what the actual goal of Hubski is (at least from what I've gathered). I think that means that quick changes and "flitting" between subjects are not really in the scope hubski. If you want to follow along with #detroit, you must carefully expand your echo chamber to include it. You'd have to comb the threads and choose the users who will best represent your interests. While tedious, this avoids a group-think mentality. Instead of everyone being forced into a common echo chamber (for example, a subreddit), each person crafts and maintains their own. It's more control ceded to the users, with an even flatter playing field, and I'm digging it.
I've just joined Hubski less than an hour ago, and realized that /that/ is how Hubski handles things. It's not a Twitter clone, nor a Reddit clone. This prevents group mentalities like 100k subreddits, but I am interested at how it deals with users with massive amounts of followers.
I kind of have to agree with kleinbl00. I don't see why you're taking away this optional user functionality from us. You realize that now people are just going to be searching for tags instead of following them? It's going to be basically the same thing, but with more annoyance to the users. I think this is an unnecessary change. I get what you're saying about it being contrary to what hubski is about, but if you want tags to go away you'd have to remove them completely. I'm willing to bet that most new users are going to be making threads over and over about where the follow tag functionality is, since you can just search for them. I hope you will reconsider this. It really didn't change all that much since the search is still available, but now it's just more tedious. If you really think tags are going to ruin hubski, then remove them entirely (but then I'll probably lose a lot of interest in the site, as will some others I reckon). Just my two cents.
Or, y'know, you could always search the tag in the search bar...