Ten days ago, Microsoft released a public communiqué announcing the closure of the more than 200 public newsgroups currently in service to the worldwide user community. The closedown is scheduled to begin in early summer 2010, according to the post.

"This decision is in response to worldwide market trends and evolving customer needs," the announcement stated. "Microsoft continues to invest in forums to reduce customer effort, consolidate community venues, and make it easier for active contributors to retain their influence. Forums provide a healthy community environment with less spam and make answers easier to find by customers and search engines. Additionally, forums offer a better user and off-topic management platform that will improve customer satisfaction by facilitating discussions in a clean space."

The decade old Microsoft Exchange-based newsgroups will be replaced for the much more modern MSDN-based forums style platforms.

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