Corvillus

Over at TechCrunch, Mike Arrington reports that Microsoft is coming out with a new YouTube clone called SoapBox. It appears as though this product will recieve the MSN branding, instead of the new Live branding that the MSN services are being changed to, which I find to be very inconsistent. The site will apparently be launched at http://soapbox.msn.com/. From the article, the feature set includes:

• 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

So this seems like an exact clone of YouTube, since YouTube has every single one of these features. I don’t see any compelling reason to use this over YouTube, however, now that this service has been announced, Microsoft has no compelling reason to buy YouTube. And as we all know, YouTube needs a buyout soon if it wants to survive without constantly throwing money down the drain for bandwidth (unless those new community based video ads are actually doing better than I think they are).

Microsoft YouTube Clone Coming [TechCrunch]