Soapbox was often referred to as a YouTube clone with stricter views on copyright.  It was responsible for only a small percentage of Microsoft’s overall video streams, and of course even that total doesn’t compare favorably to the numbers posted by sites like YouTube, MySpace, and Hulu.

So it makes sense that Erik Jorgensen, MSN’s corporate vice president and chief  media and technology officer, told Ina Fried and Stephen Shankland, "We have decided to shut down the Soapbox feature.  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."

That should give users a reasonable amount of time to rescue their content, while also letting Microsoft cut its losses in the near future.

What’ll be interesting to see is whether Microsoft has some Bing-branded video offering in the works, or if the company will be content to let things stand as they are.

Although the RampRate report stuck with the concept of YouTube not making a profit, it pegged the site’s losses at $174.2 million, or only about 37 percent of Credit Suisse’s estimate.  Contributing factors include confidence in Google’s technical prowess and negotiating skills.

Thomas Claburn explains, "Google’s ownership of dark fiber, its cost-efficient data centers, its commodity server equipment, and its use of peering agreements in lieu of paying for bandwidth combine to give the company a far lower cost model . . ."

As for how Microsoft enters into the equation, it seems that YouTube’s close to putting another rival behind it.  Ina Fried spoke to Microsoft Vice President Erik Jorgensen and wrote afterwards, "Soapbox, the video site it once hoped might take on YouTube in the user-generated content arena . . . is one of the areas that Microsoft is pulling back on in the wake of a tough economic environment."

And less competition might help YouTube establish an even more dominance stance.

We’ll keep an eye out for additional reports, and the site’s finances should definitely be worth watching in 2010.

However, probably a month after I created this article the post was flagged and nominated for deletion because it appeared as “spam” and appeared to have a “lack of credible sources “. After this first warning, I took a hard look at my post and even looked to the current Wikipedia post for “Advertising Agencies” as reference. Surprisingly, the two posts were very similar in nature. A top level view, followed by sources and links to agencies.

So not exactly knowing how to make it appear less like spam, I decided to beef up my sources, add a few more agencies to the list, and try again.

That’s when I got the following message:

“Please familiarize yourself with Wikipedia policy on reliable sources. Blogs are especially mentioned as not reliable sources……Also, please stop adding links to agencies to the page. Wikipedia is not a link directory – and Wikipedia is not a soapbox for advertising.

As of now, there are no sources whatsoever about Social media agency. And I fail to see the notability of that term, it is used by some blog posts – in blogs that seem to be advertising said agencies. If you want, we can have deletion discussion of the article.”

After this note, I decided to start a deletion discussion of the article – hoping to continue to improve my article and appease this Wikipedia warrior. However, I didn’t get the chance. Despite my rationale and my questions for clarity in my deletion discussion, my article was abruptly deleted. You can no longer find “Social Media Agency” on Wikipedia.

I know that Wikipedia has its own culture. That’s been made even more abundantly clear during this adventure. There’s a growing battle in Wikipedia between the “deletionists” (folks who believe that the bias toward new entries is to delete them unless they can prove their value) and the “inclusionists” (folks who believe server space is cheap and there’s no harm with a definition that only comes up when someone actively searches it). Clearly, I’m an inclusionist. I love the hubris of the deletionist: “I fail to see…” Yes, clearly you do.

Despite what the Wikipedia warrior believes, social media agencies are real. Ford Motor Company just hired one and awarded it their “global social media account.” But according to the Wikipedia warrior, they are writing checks to a fiction.

So I’d like to know your thoughts – do you think there should be a post on Wikipedia covering the “Social Media Agency”? Would you find it helpful and informative, or would you also view it as spam?

Comments

Of course, “importantly” doesn’t mean “goodly” (if you’ll take my meaning and excuse the grammatical nightmare).  A post on the LiveSide blog states, “On top of this, content owners will be given access to automated tools allowing them to find and remove their copyrighted content.”  The post then calls this “a move that will please the content owners and not the users . . . ”

Ars Technica’s Jacqui Cheng foresees some of the same problems, writing, “MSN declined to answer our questions about how the company planned to handle conflicts over things like parody, criticism, and other fair uses, so it’s possible that Soapbox users looking to upload content that ‘looks’ infringing to a machine-based filter may run into some frustrations with the new system.”

These issues could become a huge sticking point.  After all, there are a lot of video-sharing sites out there, and though not all of them are great, most of them work pretty well.  With no clear reason to migrate to Soapbox, users may not even give Microsoft’s offering a chance.  Soapbox will need some sort of gimmick – or preferably a real draw – to get off the ground.

A black and gray color scheme is unlikely to do the trick.

After entering an alliance with News Corp. and NBC, however, Microsoft is perhaps moving Soapbox further down on its list of priorities.

The official word coming out of Redmond is that the site was closed down until the Soapbox team could develop better measures of detecting and purging copyrighted content. Some would have you believe that Microsoft is taking the moral high ground with a move like, but there are other factors to consider here.

CNET’s Greg Sandoval raises an interesting point:

Microsoft stood to be embarrassed by the existence of pirated work on Soapbox. There was a real possibility that the company could have found itself distributing video from News Corp. and NBC Universal, at the same time another one of its units was hosting material stolen from those same companies.

Taking the speculation a bit further, could it be perhaps that Microsoft had to agree to more stringent copyright protections in order to get in on the NBC/News Corp. video deal? Obviously that’s pure conjecture, but the timing of the events seems hardly coincidental.

Nonetheless, it’s definitely a safe move for Microsoft. The last thing the company needs is to get involved in a legal brouhaha similar to the one that Google and YouTube currently find themselves wrapped up in. By aligning themselves with this new online video conglomerate, the company has the opportunity to get a piece of the revenue pie without risking legal backlash from a spurned content provider.

So, I wouldn’t expect to see Soapbox come back anytime soon. And when it does, expect it to be locked down tighter than Fort Knox.

That option comes in the form of Microsoft’s Soapbox service. Microsoft wants to work with them to combat piracy, but the studios should not employ the filtering efforts that YouTube and Google have promised. Variety grabbed the confidential memo that arrived in the inboxes of people like Disney’s Robert Iger and others. They published a brief portion of it online:

In the letter, media and entertainment VP Blair Westlake said Microsoft is developing "what we believe content owners want and need: industry-leading notice and takedown … practices, including tools that enable our content partners to more easily find content that is rightfully theirs and give us prompt notice so we can respond even more efficiently and expeditiously."

Microsoft thinks filtering isn’t reliable enough as a solution to be implemented. Various Hollywood players already dislike the YouTube/Google approach, which Variety noted seems to be ploys to get studios to license content to them in distribution and revenue sharing deals. Though Microsoft’s strategy isn’t detailed, the company does substantial business licensing its DRM schemes to content producers and online storefronts that sell digital media.

Also, proactively bringing studios into their camp by making them part of the process can help another aspect of Microsoft’s entertainment business. Their Zune media player launched a few months ago, and has not captured the public’s interest as has the Apple iPod. Apple’s device has become iconic in stature, and led them to enormous profits from the iPod’s hardware margins.

Microsoft would love nothing more than to approach Apple’s numbers. With Hollywood on their side, funneling content through Soapbox and very likely the Zune, they could have a chance at doing that.

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Revver wouldn’t lead the charge against YouTube – that role would fall upon Microsoft’s Soapbox. And that’s probably just as well, considering that all I’m getting from Revver at the moment is an error message (“Timeout Error: Our servers are a little stressed out right now. We’re working on it..! Thanks for your patience.”).

If an acquisition takes place, Revver’s technology would be incorporated into the existing Soapbox site. “MSN was there looking to see whether any of Revver’s technology or staff could be rolled into Soapbox,” a “source familiar with the talks between the companies” told CNET’s Greg Sandoval. Revver’s model of sharing advertising revenue with content creators could be a key draw.

The site may itself be in need of revenue, however – Sandoval points out that it “has fallen out of the top 20 most visited video-sharing sites,” and a number of employees have also abandoned the company in recent months. Microsoft’s unfathomably deep pockets could fix both of those problems.

But Revver’s CEO denied the possibility of an acquisition. “Revver is not for sale,” Steven Starr said in a statement. “We believe we are in the right place at the right time with the right technology, and we continue to focus on enhancing the Revver service and forging new distribution deals.”

Is he playing coy? Perhaps. As Google chips away at the Microsoft Office suite, it wouldn’t be surprising if Microsoft wanted to renew its attack on Google’s YouTube service. Acquiring Revver would be one way of going about that task.

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Which is much nicer than just sending them a link! This is how it works:

• If at any time you would like to watch a video with one of your Messenger contacts, just click on the “share” tab under a Soapbox Video and select “IM this video.”
• Which then if you are already signed into Messenger, will prompt you to choose which contact you would like to watch the video with. If you are not signed in, you will be prompted to do so.
• Then after you have choosen the contact, and once the person has accepted your invitation – boom the Messenger Activity Window will launch, with the player in full view. You can now watch the video with your friends and chat about it, all at the same time.

Happy video sharing!

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Darren Straight a Microsoft Student Partner (MSP) and Windows Live Butterfly
Expert is a University of Kent Student who is an avid blogger and technology
enthusiast who loves the passion of beta testing new products and services
from Microsoft.

In a surprising move, Microsoft’s upcoming video uploading site codenamed Warhol, has been given the final moniker of “Soapbox”, and will not be categorized in the Windows Live brand.

At the Lehman Brothers Technology Conference earlier this week, keynoter speaker Steve Berkowitz, Microsoft’s Senior Vice President of Online Services, informed attendees that Microsoft had a renewed interest in MSN.

“Rather than just abandon these hard-to-attract customers, simply because they prefer a pre-programmed entertainment-portal-style experience to a more geeky Windows Live one, why not try to steer them toward Microsoft’s Live platform as it evolves? If you can convince MSN.com users to take the time to enter their contacts into Live Messenger and their address books into Live Mail, you’ve got them hooked,” said Berkowitz.

Berkowitz also stated that Microsoft hopes to put MSN in a position to be, “the best partner for media companies” based on the fact that Microsoft “doesn’t compete directly with them.”

The project was originally created to be a contender in the incredibly competitive online video sharing market, in which YouTube currently holds the monopoly. Since YouTube’s inception and release to the public in July of 2005, its number of viewers has skyrocketed and is nearing the 50 million mark

However, MSN should be a viable competitor to the already established online video sites with its 465 million user views a month. Also, the fact that the site is run by the software giant Microsoft should be enough to gain a significant amount of traffic.

The Soapbox site is currently still an internal beta, but is expected to move into public territory in the next few weeks. Current features include:

- Upload videos in almost any format-like from your video or digital camera (maximum file size is currently 100MB)
- Tag and categorize your videos to make it easy for other people to find them
- Watch original videos and browse for new ones at the same time
- Set up your own personal RSS feeds for videos you’re interested in
- Use your Windows Live Spaces profile with Soapbox on MSN Video
- Embed a video on your Web site or blog

Ultimately Berkowitz says the goal with its Live.com destination is to “flesh it out with its other core Windows Live services, like Mail, Messenger and Spaces.”

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Autmn Davis is a staff writer for WebProNews covering ebusiness and technology.

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For a monthly fee, LibSyn, as Matt Hoopes and Dave Mansueto like to call it, will host and distribute a podcast or vlog on their system, absorbing the bandwidth costs, and providing search, an RSS feed, and submissions to audio download sites like iTunes.

This, says the company, frees up the podcaster to “grab a mic, record an MP3, get on your soapbox” and leave the logistics to them. The pricing begins reasonably enough, offering 100 MB of storage, enough for a daily 20-minute low-quality program, for just $5 per month.

At the PPME, Mansueto and Hoopes brought an entire pit crew with them, and dressed the part in NASCAR-type green uniforms. They gave us a lively explanation of their services, and there was some discussion of “Susie Tubes.”

Say the infamous phrase “series of tubes” three times quickly and see how it sounds to you.

About a year ago, Liberated Syndication, the progenitors of which still had their day jobs, piqued the interest of Web 2.0 pioneers. As quoted by Alex Williams, Dave Winer expounds about how LibSyn is in the right place at the right time:

Watch the complete LibSyn video

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