MSN Soapbox, Microsoft’s Version Of YouTube

Probably irritated by Google’s dominance in the video social networking world, Microsoft has been steadily working on their own version of YouTube, called Soapbox. Users of Soapbox can upload videos, rate and comment on them, and even categorize them via tags–although users are only limited to five tags per video.

Although Microsoft has done an excellent job of designing the layout of Soapbox, there seems to be several bugs when uploading a video (at least uploading it via Firefox). The status bar does not inform you when the video is uploaded, although after logging off and back on, your video should appear (and if not, you can vent on their blog).

The layout of Soapbox is a bit less cluttered than YouTube’s, as well as Google Video, and one may notice that the MS team focused on simplicity and usability when creating the site. There does not seem to be many users on Soapbox (probably because you need an invite in order to join) although there are some funny video’s within the site, such as this anti mac spoof.

Darnell Clayton

Darnell Clayton is a geek who discovered blogging long before he heard of the word "blog" (he called them "web journals" then). When he is not tweeting, friendfeeding, or blogging about space, he enjoys running, reading and describing himself in third person.