I use the PMs in a couple of different ways: I reach out to new users and talk to them about the site, their experience, any bugs or suggestions they have or help them out with things they may not fully understand yet. Sometimes I message first and sometimes they message me. Sometimes they have a bug or question. I have a couple conversations via PM about more personal life stuff that doesn't need to be broadcast on Hubski. I sometimes send links or quotes or stuff to users if I think they may enjoy it for a certain reason but it's not a big enough or good enough post to warrant a whole post on Hubski. ie: if I know someone is learning about design or HTML or javascript and I stumble on an interesting writeup, I'll send it their way. And then I have a few threads that were deeper conversations or conversations on a thread that kinda turned into something more. These are more rare than the others though.