Expanded view for replies and reactions to a message

One of the things that bug me the most about instant messaging is when someone asks an interesting question, but you have to scroll down looking for replies because other people started talking about other things.

I'd like to solve that in RiotX by introducing an expanded view. This is how it would work:


Messages with replies would show replies right next to reactions. In the example Andy's message has two replies, but they're out of sight because of unrelated messages.

To the right there's an "expand" button, that can be used to trigger the expanded view:


When you click "expand", replies appear underneath the message. In the example Benoit and Horst's messages (which are replies to Andy's message) are shown right below, even though they were written much later.

Ideally there could also be a list of reactions right below the replies (e.g. the three people who gave andy's message a thumbs up) but that doesn't appear in the mockup.

Clicking the "collapse" button would then close the expanded view and return to normal.