MSN jumped to 35 million users, giving it 9% market share, good enough for #2 in an area heavily dominated by Google’s YouTube. Yahoo is half a percentage point behind Google. If Microsoft can sustain big gains for a few more months, they could pull away to become the indisputed top at the “Best of the Rest”.

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MSN Video Gets Update

The new MSN Video makes it easier for users to search the video content from 40 video content providers as well as video from across the Web. MSN Video now integrates Soapbox user-generated videos into the same destination and allows users to browse the MSN Video catalog while watching a video in a split-screen format. Users can also create playlists of their favorite videos to share with others.

"This latest release of MSN Video will make discovering, watching and sharing video easier and more entertaining than ever before," said Rob Bennett, general manager, entertainment, video and sports for MSN.

"By increasing the discoverability of our deep catalog, making it easier to share videos with friends, and improving the advertising model, we are continuing in our mission to make video an integral part of the MSN experience."

The advertising delivery model for MSN Video, now delivers advertising based on the amount of time a users spends watching videos, instead of the number of clips watched. MSN Video users will see pre-roll ads before the first video and then see additional ads no more than once every three minutes while viewing videos.

The new version of MSN Video is available today in the U.S. and in a beta version in Brazil, Canada, Germany, Italy, Japan, Spain and the U.K.

By indexing new clips from MSN Video on ClipBlast, viewers will be able to browse news, sports and entertainment streamed from NBC and MSNBC, Food Network, HGTV, National Geographic and MTV Networks.

"ClipBlast! gives people a new way to find exactly what they want from MSN Video," said Karin Muskopf, product manager MSN.

"This powerful search platform brings the entire Web under its roof, and we’re delighted to be recognized by ClipBlast! as an important platform provider."

MSN Video features online entertainment events, including coverage of the Golden Globe awards and the Live Earth concerts. Other offerings include user-generated video to content created for MSN Originals. MSN Video had 10.3 million unique visitors in July 2007, according to Nielsen/NetRatings.

"With extensive content relationships of its own, MSN Video delivers a wide variety of content from its network to ClipBlast!," said Gary Baker, founder and CEO of ClipBlast!

"We’re bringing people the entire Video Web, and letting people find the latest content on MSN Video is a key part of that process. Forging relationships with top-notch platform partners like MSN Video makes our search/browse/watch capabilities that much more compelling."

If MySpace Loves You, Everybody Loves You

Recently, it came to light that both YouTube and MSN Video owe an enormous slice of their success to MySpacers linking or embedding their videos. Now, as Hitwise’s LeeAnn Prescott reports, over half of Photobucket’s market share is due to its preference among MySpace users.

"Traffic to Photobucket has continued to grow along with MySpace and social networking – from March 2006 to March 2007 its market share of US visits increased by 113% and it captured 41% of visits to the Hitwise Entertainment – Photography category," writes Prescott at the Hitwise blog.

Yahoo! Photos is the nearest competitor, gathering just under six percent of the market, followed my Yahoo-owned Flickr, with 4.5 percent. Fourth place is Slide with 4.45 percent, followed by Kodak Gallery with 3.43 percent in fifth.

Slide may be an interesting one to watch. Not the typical photo-sharing web service, Slide lets users become visual storytellers (a hipper version of your Aunt Gertrude’s mind-numbing vacation slide shows). But Slide gets over 70 percent of its traffic from MySpace, and has grown by more than 2000 percent in the past year.

Yes, 2000 percent.

So what are learning about online marketing here? Well, we know that if you want to be found, you turn to Google. But if you want to build buzz and loyalty, you turn to MySpace. The social network’s impact on web-services that have become household names now is (dare I say it?) indisputable.

If you’re developing a widget, a web app, a social network, a concept – whatever – then getting adopted by MySpace users should send you straight to the top. And once again, we’re on, on to social marketing.

On top of that, they would be spending time in a mountain chateau with Halle Berry, Famke Janssen and Rebecca Romijn as part of their hosting duties for the first ever Cannes Digital Press Junket for X-Men: the Last Stand, MSN said before sticking out it’s tongue at the rest of us.

Guess that’s what they meant in the title of the MSN Media Alert: MSN Video Brings Viewers Exclusive Look at Cannes; which is just begging for a butt joke. But let’s be professionals.

The premiere party for the Da Vinci Code was held inside the famous Louvre Museum in Paris, where the MSN Video crew took in the sights and interviewed the cast of the movie. Steve Ballmer embarrassed himself by asking Tom Hanks, “what’d you do to your hair?”

Coverage of the events can be viewed at MSN’s designated Cannes webpage.

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