YouTube has seen off another contender to its throne, with Microsoft preparing to kill off Soapbox, or at least substantially shutter the user-generated portion of the site. If even Microsoft cannot hope to compete, is YouTube too dominant for the health of the online video sector?
No To YouTube, Yes To Soapbox
Before Google spent $1.65 billion acquiring YouTube in 2006, Microsoft was thought to be interested in buying the site itself. When Google got there first, Microsoft issued a statement saying that while it had “evaluated acquiring this type of technology several months ago” it had decided against it. Instead it was going to build its own video-sharing Web site as this was “a more cost-effective way to compete in this new space.”
That service was named Soapbox and was launched in a private beta by the end of that same year. It launched fully in 2007, and was clearly a YouTube clone. The only real difference being its approach to copyrighted material. While YouTube leaves the discovery of this content to the copyright holder, Microsoft took the task on itself.
Taking A Dive
was (and still is at the time of writing) a place for anyone with a Windows Live ID to upload user-generated content. But now, due to the tough economic times we are experiencing, Microsoft is killing off the site in its current form. Online video isn’t the only area to fall to Microsoft’s penny-pinching, with other products such as Microsoft Money also being culled.
Microsoft Vice President Erik Jorgensen told CNET that Soapbox is now going to be turned into a specialized video site for bloggers and citizen journalists to post content in categories such as entertainment, lifestyle, and finance. These are all areas in which the MSN portal already focuses.
YouTube’s Dominance
The problem for Microsoft is that YouTube is just too dominant, with around a 40 percent share of the total online video market. How can anyone, even a company as huge and cash rich as Microsoft, compete? The answer is no one can, with Microsoft boasting of under two percent of the market. So it’s no wonder Soapbox is getting killed off.
YouTube has become synonymous with online video. In the same way you now Google something rather than search for it, or eBay a used item rather than sell online, YouTube IS online video, both in terms of uploading videos to the Web, and watching them as well.
Conclusions
If you see a video on any other video site on the Web, the chances are you can then go to YouTube and see it on there instead within a few hours. YouTube now boasts 20 hours of video content uploaded every minute. Compare that to Soapbox, which Paid Content claims only had 22 videos uploaded over the course of an hour.
Ultimately though, as huge and dominating as YouTube is, it’s cost Google a fortune already and is still on course to lose money this year, although there is some debate over how much. Microsoft may be shuttering Soapbox but will the company really regret letting YouTube slip through its fingers when it has so far turned out to be a money pit.
