Online Services Discontinued

Three more online services are being discontinued as part of Microsoft’s continued focus on cost-cutting. Microsoft’s consumer online services have always been vulnerable to elimination, given the company’s frequent shifts in its online strategy. A recent move to focus on search for consumer online revenue, as well as difficult economic conditions, mean that further cuts are likely.

In July and Aug. 2009, Microsoft announced it would discontinue the following online services:

MSN Soapbox, a Web site to which users could upload their own videos, was shut down in July 2009. Soapbox was launched in Sept. 2006 as a would-be competitor to YouTube, which had shown spectacular user growth since its launch the year before. (Google, which already had its own Google Video service, acquired YouTube shortly after Soapbox was announced.) Microsoft temporarily stopped accepting new videos to the site in spring 2007, while it put tools in place to screen posted videos for potential copyright violations, and the site never regained momentum. MSN Corporate Vice President Erik Jorgensen acknowledged that Soapbox accounts for only 5% of the video streams on MSN Video, the company’s video content site, which also contains a wide variety of professionally created video licensed from partners such as NBC. In addition, advertisers have been lukewarm toward user-posted video, preferring professionally created video. (For background on Soapbox, see “New Services Tap Users for Content” on page 33 of the Nov. 2006 Update and “MSN Courts Video Content Owners” on page 24 of the May 2007 Update.)