It's official: Microsoft 'retiring' YouTube challenger Soapbox

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It's official: Microsoft 'retiring' YouTube challenger Soapbox

Todd Bishop on Tuesday, July 21, 2009, 8:42am PDT

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After hinting at this possibility last month, Microsoft today said it will shut down its Soapbox user-generated video service in stages in the coming weeks. Microsoft launched Soapbox in 2006 as challenge to YouTube, but it never became a credible rival.

"Beginning today, July 21, we will be notifying both our customers and our internal and external partners that on July 29th, people will no longer be able to upload videos to Soapbox and on August 31st, the service will no longer be available," confirmed MSN chief Erik Jorgensen in an email message. "Though we’ll be retiring the Soapbox service in its current form, we are committed to user-generated content and our other video offerings through MSN Video."

In raw numbers, at least, the effect won't be significant. Jorgensen, MSN corporate vice president and chief media and technology officer, noted that Soapbox delivers less than 5 percent of the overall 480 million video streams worldwide on MSN Video each month. MSN Video overall posted its best month ever in the U.S. in June, with 250 million streams, he added.

"We also plan to add functionality into MSN Video to easily enable bloggers and citizen journalists to upload content to share with our MSN users," Jorgensen wrote. "Video remains an important and growing area within our overall content strategy"

Previously: Q&A: MSN chief Jorgensen on future of Microsoft's Web portal

About Todd Bishop

Todd Bishop is co-founder and managing editor of TechFlash. He has covered Microsoft and the technology industry for more than five years, most recently as a daily newspaper reporter and blogger based in Seattle.

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