AOL confirms: No more user-uploaded video
The company is shuttering its video hosting service in December, and invites users to transfer their videos to start-up Motionbox instead.
AOL is ending its foray into user-generated video, the company confirmed Monday after a weekend of blog reports. On December 18, its AOL Video Uploads service will officially close its doors.
Users who have videos currently hosted through the service will receive an e-mail this week, and will be given the chance to transfer their videos to AOL's preferred alternative, start-up Motionbox, before December 18. If they don't, their videos will be deleted.
AOL has made a concerted effort to shake off some of its older and less successful properties--Journals, Hometown, and AOL Pictures, to name a few, not to mention the fact that parent company Time Warner plans to spin off its flagging dial-up service--while forging ahead with newer, shinier projects. The company continues to launch new blog titles and beef up its Platform-A advertising product; it's also modified its homepage to bring in feeds from multiple e-mail and social-networking sites.
The Google-owned YouTube remains the overwhelming leader in amateur video uploads.
But AOL's not the only one reworking its service priorities. Earlier this fall, Microsoft announced that it was shutting down its MSN Groups service in favor of starting the new Windows Live Groups, and that MSN Groups would be effectively ported over to social network Multiply.
