This was originally written on Hatch — the internal version of Medium for Medium employees. For the last few weeks, we’ve been using mentions on Hatch and we’re loving it. (See Hatching Inside Medium for more context.)

Hey Ev, what about mentions?

I’ve always wanted to let people know that I’ve mentioned them in my Medium stories.

Mentioning people could draw them into the conversation, like how joanna coles recounts conversations with Peggy Northrop and Kirsten Gillibrand in her story about being a working mother. And did you see Chris Stout-Hazard’s hilarious ranking of the presidential candidates’ logos? What if Marco Rubio, Hillary Clinton, Jeb Bush, Carly Fiorina, Bernie Sanders, and Martin O’Malley all knew that Chris has something to say to them? It’d be amazing.

The ability to mention each other could really bring people together. David points out that mentions could greatly increase creative expression. Sure, we’re not the first ones to do this (you used to work for Twitter, right?), but it could be huge for Medium.

For our big event in October, let’s introduce mentions on Medium. I know it would hook Mario Sundar, who wrote “Five Ways to Get Me Hooked on Medium.”

Here’s how I see it working: Start writing, type @, and then the name of the person you want to mention. When you mention someone, we’ll send them a notification so they know why their ears are burning. By default, you’ll get push and email notifications from people you follow, but you can control which notifications you receive in your settings.

That’s it. What do you think?