On the mobile front, MSFT is gaining traction:

- By adopting Flash Lite, its mobile strategy adds more utility;
- Apple adopted its Mobile OS for the iPhone in a clear attempt to wage war against Research In Motion’s Blackberry, but it also gives MSFT a foothold in the burgeoning handheld computing, wireless entertainment and mobile advertising space.

But on the Web - where advertising will become a $51B market in the US alone by 2012 - I can’t help but scratch my head.

Why? The next four years’ growth will be driven by video. Yet in video, MSFT seems clueless.

Today, I was scanning the online video landscape and decided to stop by MSN’s video platform, which I presume is Soapbox. I say presume, because for the love of me I can’t tell how MSN Video is different than Soapbox. By the sound of it, one would guess that Soapbox is the UGC site, right?

Who knows. It’s a shame that MSFT seems confused about its video strategy - like Yahoo! fittingly - because MSNBC.com is a leader in video streams. So why is MSN.com not a leader in video? Who knows. One reason? Their reluctance to use Adobe’s Flash. MSFT has Silverlight, but Flash is ubiquitous (reference: YouTube).

Anyway, memo to MSN Video, why don’t you allow for flash files?

Accepted file types: AVI, ASF, WMV, MOV, MPEG 1/2/4, 3GP, 3G2, DV, QT, DivX and Xvid.

Hmm… That seems off. If you want to be relevant in video and turn your back on flash files, that is pretty backwards.

Video’s biggest obstacle is that there remains a lot of friction in the ecosystem. I could write a book (note to self: do that) on the friction in video content and advertising…

MSFT could help reduce some of that, but somehow I think that by pushing Silverlight it will reduce it.

Because of that, instead of seamlessly enjoying 35 magical clips on NCAA classic basketball programming, we have to do them slowly… Here’s the first one: enjoy Michael Jordan at UNC here, embedded below:

Video: Michael Jordan - Greatest College Basketball Players