Microsoft had a YouTube clone? Hmm, news to me...

Next you'll be telling me they run a search engine as well...

Only 2.0? I'm thinking somewheres in the area of 155.9.83 r.J

.. they'll be axing Microsoft Money.

Oh. Wait.

They kept that one rather quiet, I hadn't heard of it before reading this article!

I might have used it if they called it something more 2.0 like.. Wang or Dild. Or Flangr.

Who'd have thought a crappy, derivative web 2.0 fluff site would fail against a pre-established, well known rival?

Compete with rival for profit in a service that isn't even breaking even for them and will cost you development, maintenance and hosting. Recipe for fail. I'd rather have a cheaper Windows thanks, but feel free to wank away your money.

Add me to the crew who had no idea that Soapbox even existed. Yikes!

Oh, they mean MSN video!

The only reason they get so many hits is because every time someone opens up MSN messenger (sorry, Windows Live messenger), it displays an ad popup containing videos from the site and some adverts. I've clicked on few out of general interest but I would be ashamed to count myself as a Soapbox subscriber.

and astonished that they thought it would be a good idea to be honest.

... because it's been around for three years and I didn't even know it existed!!!

I dimly remember the name now you mention it. It seems like a case of MS leading the pack, here. I cant imagine that youtube will hang around for that much longer without some pretty major changes - those changes may happen slowly, without fanfare, but they'll happen. You just need to look at the music videos debacle in the UK and Germany (?) which youtube/Google have managed to make into "the man wanted too much money" rather than a "we can't pay the musicians for their work cuz we're skint" to see that things are changing.

It doesn't take a genius to see that taking the two major expenses in IT, namely bandwidth and storage and turning them into a free service is going to cost money hand over fist.