We quietly launched a new area of the site tonight – TechCrunch Forums. Reader feedback and comments are an integral part of this blog (in fact, any blog in our opinion), and we want to be able to expand the conversation beyond whatever posts are fresh at a given time. The Forums is the place to do that.

Create a thread on any topic you like. This is a good place to pitch your new startup or product if it hasn’t been featured yet on TechCrunch (or even if it has), share tips with the community, spread rumors, or endlessly debate the definition (or existence) of Web 2.0. When interesting conversations spring up, we’ll link to them from the main TechCrunch blog.

We’re still getting the bugs worked out, so it will evolve from its current state over time.

The software behind the Forums is from Jive Software. Their stuff is bulletproof (or so we hear), and they power the Apple discussion board as well as 1,450 other forums on the web. Thanks to them and Media Temple, our primary hosting provider, for their help in getting this set up.

We’ll roll out dedicated versions of this for the other blogs in the network as soon as this is nailed down. Please let us know of any bugs you find.

A permanent link to the TechCrunch Forums is in the navigation bar at the top of the site (on the left), or you can get there directly at forums.techcrunch.com.