Microsoft has a new site and new technologies for the community called Microsoft Communities: http://www.microsoft.com/communities/beta/default.mspx.

Microsoft Communities is a combination of forums, blogs, TagSpace and ClaimSpace. The forums will eventually replace http://forums.microsoft.com and offers a similar but upgraded experience to its predecessor. The blogs will eventually replace http://blogs.msdn.com and http://blogs.technet.com. TagSpace is like a Favourites for your browser except that the favourites list is held on a server (allowing you to access it from any machine) and the tags are not organised hierarchically as they are in Internet Explorer’s favourites.

Another really interesting idea in Microsoft Communities is ClaimSpace. ClaimSpace allows you to make a statement (a claim) about anything on the web. Other people can assert that your claim is true or false and your reputation is assessed based on the community feedback. It will be interesting to see how such a social exercise works in practice.