Medium is about stories, not (so much) about conversation

My understanding is that the emphasis here at Medium is on writing (and reading) stories. Replies themselves on Medium are just other stories triggered by a particular “originating story”, if you will. In that sense, having “replies” mixed in with other more “spontaneous” (my word) stories makes perfect sense. It keeps the focus on the individual story (whether a reaction/reply story or a spontaneous one) being read.

There’s a bit of a disconnect, as far as I can tell, between the web interface and the mobile app (at least on iOS) when it comes to “notes” (not possible on mobile?), but notes seem to be the more directly “conversational” part of Medium, but focused on a particular piece of writing. Notes are also virtually hidden, so that you only notice them if a particular section of text has given you something to say or think about, too.

Having a separate, centralized inbox of sorts for “conversation” (whether it be in the form of notes or replies) might tend to take the focus away from the writing and reading “core” of Medium.

If conversation became too easy and prominent on Medium, all us writers would be spending the lion’s share of our time conversing and not enough of it actually creating new stories for people to read.

Anyway, that’s just my take on what the devs here are trying to do. Not that I’ve ever talked to any of them, but just based on what I’ve seen as I use the service.

You might also enjoy some of these related stories of mine:

The tricky business of social platform development
Feeling the need for feed management