#hashtag horrors! Tweets not showing up?

If a Tweet falls in the forest...

I just had a discussion about Twitter that led me to do some research into how their hashtag mechanism works. The whole thing came about when my friend (and sometimes client) joined into a discussion but, upon searching the discussion, couldn't see her Tweets. The post was properly formatted, with a space before and after the hashtag mention, but nothing.

I logged in, checked the discussion, and i could see it just fine.

After doing some online research, it turns out that Twitter over-promises and underdelivers on the hashtag feature.

I found this great post that goes in depth about a similar situation. A Twitter rep told the writer:

Due to current resource constraints, not every Tweet can be indexed in Twitter Search at the moment.
...

While I’m not able to force your Tweets to appear in search, your followers should still receive all of your updates and we will still deliver your @replies to other users.

I can interpret this as such: Twitter "indexes" its Tweets, scouring them for hashtag mentions. When it finds a Tweet with a hashtag, it inserts it into the corresponding hashtag discussion. Twitter simply lacks the resources to index every single Tweet. Do they lack the resources to index in almost real time, or do they lack the resources to index altogether? Will the hashtag Tweet show up eventually, or not at all?

In both questions, I'm assuming the latter. Yes, you'll see Tweets in discussions tagged as "one minute ago." So consider this, one minute ago, 30 Tweets were made with that hashtag. You're seeing the lucky Tweet that got indexed. The other 29? You'll see them if you're an active follower of any of those Twitter members, but that's it.

I know this is a First World Problem, but Twitter should at least be more up front with its users instead of promoting a feature whose functionality is hit or miss at best.

Anyway, use the link up there on the right to follow me on Twitter.

If you can!

Thanks!