Microsoft Soapbox to Shutdown

MSN will no longer offer Soapbox!! Soapbox was Microsoft's version of user generated video service and was also a part of MSN Video. Sadly it has met the grave and will be laid to rest on August 31, 2009. Microsoft Soapbox was considered to be the tech giant’s answer to Google’s most-popular video sharing service YouTube. The demise was announced via a formal e-mail a few minutes ago.

Microsoft hasn't completely backed out of the video sharing/streaming market though - as MSN Video will remain online. MSN Video gets roughly about 88 million unique visitors per month that translates to 480 million video streams a month. On the other hand Soapbox was getting a mere less than 5% of what MSN Video gets. So, it was quite obvious that the service need to be shut down. Hope Soapbox videos don't get listed on Irish buy and sell web site.

From 29th July 2009, users will NOT be able to upload any videos onto Soapbox and those folks who have uploaded videos earlier into their Soapbox account will have time until August 31, 2009 to download them. So maybe you need to download and upload onto youtube for greater prosperity!! I feel that the folks at Microsoft should have given an easy option for the SoapBox users to directly send the videos onto their MSN Videos account.