Gods forbid I get accused of being a snob or pedant, but as an English professor I have a legitimate gripe with the use of conversate. Even though it appears in M-W, note the use of non-standard English in the dictionary. That means it is not accepted as Standard English. The problem with using it is that many students these days don't differentiate between the English they use with their friends and the English they use when writing formally. Imagine the reaction a potential employer or grad school is going to have when they see conversate appear in an application. It's okay to use slang amongst friends, as long as you acknowledge that it is slang. If we're going to argue that conversate is a word, because a growing number of people use it, then does that mean that funna (as in I'm funna go to the store) is a word too?