I have two ideas to contribute the second one builds on the first one, the first on derived from rocket-chat.
Situation in rocket-chat: on top of the left pane, the first entry is: "Favorites", where your "starred" channels are listed.
enhanced idea of the rocket chat implementation: create a more generic method for starring, so you can not only star channels, but people, conversations as well. this allows to jump right to the important conversations.
adding the number of updates of the item since you viewed (focus on it) it last, next to its name in the list, would be helpful and could be thought of/implemented as well.
organizing favorites: organizing your favorites trough a tree list/threaded view/tree structure, so i can have for instance
for every team/intern project/topic a folder with the starred communication regarding it.
the interface for this must be very intuitive, like drag and drop a message/contact/conversation into favorits,
with the possibility on creating a new sub folder when releasing.
right click on it and a specific button like a star.
i recommend to put a down pointing little triangle next to to the star, on which once clicked, a menu opens with
advanced "add to favorites" options, like those you would get when dragging and dropping an item to favorites.
just by this you can get very structured and very personalized favorites
and as we know, everything which can adopt very dynamically to the needs of people,
will get addictive trough pleasure for them.
items to be favored: channels, personal conversations, people, side threads, single posts and there for links (like an etherpad link, a doodle, a todolist), uploaded media
please discuss and criticize my idea,
till it is so well thought of, that it will be a round solution
by that i want to invite you to not only criticize, but also come up with solutions
and integrate them into the proposal so it fits your needs and that you think
it would work that way and you would like and want to have it yourself!
thank you!
Walter