Hi @fitinfun, the idea is to be networking. One of the best example is @lemouth (my brother in law). He is a scientist. At first he wrote articles that didn't get much attention. Then he got in steemit.chat and decided to connect with other scientists.

Then he started a project called STEEMSTEM which is a grouping of people who care about science and curate good articles. Then they could have started a curation trail (I'll do an article on how to start a curation trail soon) to give more visibility to STEM related topic.

People value people who want to increase the value of the network.

Chatting is the way you do that.