In the coming months, Microsoft plans to significantly scale back Soapbox, the user generated video site hosted on MSN Video. In an interview on Tuesday, Microsoft Vice President Erik Jorgensen said Soapbox is one of the areas that Microsoft is pulling back on in the wake of a tough economic environment.

He told CNET News that Microsoft hopes to transform Soapbox into a forum where bloggers and citizen journalists can post videos relevant to areas in which MSN focuses, categories like entertainment, lifestyle, and finance.

"We definitely look at it and say we want Soapbox to stand for something and add to our overall video strategy," Jorgensen said.

A video-forum eh? Will people still be able to freely upload there videos or will there be some sort of editorial selection before the uploaded videos make it onto the site? Nobody knows yet, not even Jorgensen:

"We haven’t decided whether you just continue to support it or whether it is too expensive and out of our focus to do," he said.

Seattlepi reports that the Microsoft communication people walked a more cautious line saying there isn’t anything specific to announce about Soapbox at this time. We’ll just have to wait and see where this leads.