so i'm trying to develop an app

no more than 500 words in length

So we end up with the problem usually referred to as ‘information overload’ but I prefer to call notification literacy. As I say in the linked post, there are preventative measures and mitigating actions you can take as an individual to help ‘increase your notification literacy’. There are also ways of facilitating communities that can help, for example if the platform you’re using has threaded comments, insisting that people use instead of a confusing, undifferentiated stream of messages. You can also ensure you have a separate chat or channel just for important announcements.

There is also no easy way of informing an author that someone has commented on his or her work, especially if he or she is not a Hypothes.is user.