Microsoft Preps Soapbox To Compete With YouTube

[Nomad559]

Microsoft Preps Soapbox To Compete With YouTube

Microsoft is preparing to go live with their new user-generated video service and is ramping up to take on YouTube in the near future. Codenamed Warhol, the service's final name is said to be "Soapbox." It will debut on MSN instead of Windows Live, as many have expected, but will nevertheless be tightly integrated with Microsoft's MySpace competitor, Windows Live Spaces. The details of the new service are rumored to be very similar to those of YouTube, with a 100 MB upload limit from "almost any format," tags and categories, RSS feeds, integration of a Windows Live Spaces account, and the ability to embed videos on a web page or blog.

Aside from item-specific and submitter-specific RSS feeds, another item to note is the lack of any sort of length limits to the uploaded videos. In March of this year, YouTube folded to heavy criticism of copyrighted content being uploaded to the site by placing a 10-minute video limit on all user-uploaded videos that were not from a Director account—a Premium Content Creator account that allows professionals to post their own professionally-created videos to YouTube. This was done in hopes of discouraging users from attempting to upload full-length TV shows to the site, which really didn't eliminate the copyrighted content from being available, but toned it down a fair amount. So far, it doesn't appear as if Soapbox has such limitations, but that could change before the service goes live or soon thereafter.

:)

[datadiva]

1. I'm sticking with YouTube, thank you. n/t