Xdrive launches video-sharing service

Online storage company Xdrive is trying to do for video what Shutterfly and Ofoto have done for photos--letting people share the memories.

Xdrive has added videos to the list of file formats supported by the company's services. People can now store video clips encoded in formats such as MPEG, Windows Media, RealNetworks, QuickTime and AVI.

The service then lets people e-mail outside contacts and invite them to view these files. The same holds true for Xdrive users who store other types of files, such as music, photos and documents.

Xdrive charges $9.95 a month for 500MB of storage and progressively up to $49.95 a month for 5GB.

Charging for storage has not always been the case for Xdrive. The company made its name during the mid-1990s as a free online storage company that made money by selling advertising. Other companies such as Driveway and I-Drive also launched businesses bent on tapping online advertising as a way to subsidize digital storage costs.

However, the online advertising collapse contributed to the demise of some storage sites. Other storage companies, such as FreeDrive, became embroiled in digital copyright issues by allowing people to share song files stored on a user's account.