PMs or private messages are now "Conversations"

Not too much of a shift but PMs are a thing of the past! we now have Conversations which show up in your profile much as visitors posts used to except that, like PMs, these are private.

You can have them one-on-one or with group of people. Just put their names in the box separated by a comma ','

The "Start a conversation" can be found in many locations; here are three I have found thus far

In the nav bar



Clicking on the other person's avatar. This is what it known as an Overlay - or in more familiar words, a pop-up!



In your In-Box, under the list of previous conversation titles, there is a fourth place to start a new conversation.



Once you get into your list of messages or conversations, there are two buttons to start a new conversation plus the one on the Nav Bar is still available



Now you are taken to the new message page where you can add other member's names and apply other controls like allowing your invitees to invite others into the conversation or locking it so no further comments can be made



when you Start the conversation, the persons you have added to the address list will be sent alerts advising them to come and join in.

You will observe that this ends up looking just like a thread except only you and your invitees can see it

 

The key thing that is different, well to me at least!, is that there is no separate Inbox and Outbox. All the exchanges of message relating to that (one) specific conversation are in a single thread - just like the threads in the forum. So its really easy to refer back to an earlier point in the conversation.

Addiitonal point: You can invite other people to a conversation: