I've seen today with a bit of surprise the Doug Seven's announce of Athens, the community platform that Microsoft is working on.
This new platform seems too much like the famous Community Server by Telligent, but it's interesting to know that someone inside Microsoft is interested on developing a collabouration platform like this.
The beta is not ready to be tested but I've to leave here my main considerations: seems that "Athens" will be released as a service to subscribe, not as an independent platform like Community Server. So... will be this a succesful idea? 
Community Server is extremely interesting because it's available as a free platform (for a personal blog for example, where you can install it on your personal web server) or as a commercial platform (for a corporate community platform). Why "Athens" can't be like this?