Userplane: Message Boards 2.0?

Mashable today profiled the launch of Userplane Boards, "an innovative new message board product (that) combines aspects of Userplane’s other services like chat and IM with threaded message board discussion, creating a real-time environment that makes following conversations much easier."

This will be an interesting product to keep an eye on. For one thing, it's Flash-based, which should scare the bejeezus out of anyone looking at it as an enterprise-wide community platform. But because Userplane is an AOL property (part of the Platform-A strategy) the platform is available for free, with advertising. And they've also included migration tools for, among others, vBulletin and phpBB admins, as well as customizable CSS to match the look and feel of existing sites.