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Microsoft Soapbox to Take On YouTube

Tuesday, September 19th, 2006 at 10:10 AM - by

Microsoft launched a beta of its own community-driven video Web site on Monday. The YouTube-like Soapbox on MSN Video Web site lets users upload and share their own videos, link to their favorites in emails or on blogs, and subscribe to RSS feeds.

Rob Bennett, general manager of Entertainment and Video Services for MSN, commented "Soapbox delivers on a critical component of the MSN growth strategy of deepening audience engagement by enabling people to participate in the content experience."

Much like it did with the Xbox, and the soon to be released Zune, Microsoft is entering the market behind its competition. In addition to YouTube, Google, AOL, and Yahoo! also offer video sharing services.

Soapbox on MSN Video supports both Mac and Windows, but is currently available on an invitation-only basis. Once the beta testing phase is completed, it will be available to the general public.

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Tiger said:

member since 17 Jun 2003 with 1018 posts, unranked, send him a message or view his profile

Tue Sep 19, 2006 10:38 am

Wow.

That's going to win me over. I think I'll go out and buy a Zune just so I can get videos from Soapbox and carry them with me everywhere I go.

Or maybe I'll just put this nailgun to my head and pull the trigger.

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geoduck said:

member since 30 Dec 2003 with 1922 posts, unranked, send him a message or view his profile

Tue Sep 19, 2006 12:38 pm

MS's strategy seems to be to wait until someone else comes up with a good idea, develop their own, often inferior, version of it, advertise the hell out of their version and lose money for a number of years until they stomp out the competition and take over. I wonder if this model actually works. The X-Box hasn't seemed to catch fire.

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jadeleary said:

member since 07 Jun 2005 with 20 posts, unranked, send him a message or view his profile

Tue Sep 19, 2006 12:47 pm

Can't these guys get ONE original idea?

They're so pathetic it's not even funny anymore. Microsoft Windows Live Spaces anyone?

Though not.

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A guest said: (hide)

Tue Sep 19, 2006 1:05 pm

Well, in their defense, they're in pursuit of eyeballs.

How do companies like YouTube et al. make money off this? Advertising. Much like the television networks, they're in pursuit of your eyeballs and, therefore, will do whatever seems popular this week.

Remember when "Who Wants To Be A Millionaire?" was popular on ABC? Suddenly, everybody else came up with game shows. Same with "Reality" Shows, Dramas, etc. Why? To sell advertising. "Hey, people like this! Let's make more of it so people will tune and see the ads."

So a site like YouTube becomes popular and everyone else will copy it in order to pull in some eyeballs to sell advertising. That's what you get in an ad-based world--lots of copycats.

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Actual Reality said:

member since 16 Aug 2005 with 44 posts, unranked, send him a message or view his profile

Tue Sep 19, 2006 2:09 pm

anyone remember the report about the iTV interfacing with google video in order to pull videos down to your set-box (and presumably your ipod) for sharing?

i wonder if this is meant more for selling zune players or for some integration with media center-type pcs.

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A guest said: (hide)

Tue Sep 19, 2006 2:48 pm

geoduck wrote:
MS's strategy seems to be to wait until someone else comes up with a good idea, develop their own, often inferior, version of it, advertise the hell out of their version and lose money for a number of years until they stomp out the competition and take over.

This has been Microsoft's business plan for decades now. They don't innovate, they copy and try to have their thumb in every pie. And they can afford to, thanks to their monopoly profits from Windows and Office.

No they don't make great products, but then, they never did.

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A guest said: (hide)

Tue Sep 19, 2006 11:27 pm

Yawn, yet another attempt at releasing a copycat so all the mindless MS IT guys in the world convince all the sheep that this is the only stuff that will work on their computers and network. This is classic MS fashion, too bad they cant offer us somthing we dont already have that we can actually use!

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A guest said: (hide)

Wed Sep 20, 2006 12:40 pm

Guest wrote:
Yawn, yet another attempt at releasing a copycat so all the mindless MS IT guys in the world convince all the sheep that this is the only stuff that will work on their computers and network. This is classic MS fashion, too bad they cant offer us somthing we dont already have that we can actually use!

Fortunately the MS cronies, um, I mean IT guys, don't have much say in folks' personal choice of mp3 players. That's part of why Apple has been able to own that space, and MS has been quietly fuming as its' partners have failed repeatedly to make a dent in the iPod+iTunes juggernaut. Not that Zune will do significantly better.

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