Soapbox from Microsoft

Soapbox (http://soapbox.msn.com) - video sharing is the latest offering from Microsoft.
Call it Microsoft's ego getting in the way of their focus or a smart strategy to tap into the overly popular video sharing business, Soapbox has a key advantage of being tightly integrated into Microsoft's other online services.

Soapbox enables its users to upload videos in several formats, assign categories and share them with other people. Microsoft claims that Soapbox will be more bandwidth efficient than its competition.
Soapbox will be tightly integrated throughout Microsoft's portfolio of online services, including Windows Live Spaces and Messenger. Microsoft could also link Soapbox with Zune, using which you can share content wirelessly, Soapbox could have a huge advantage due to this. YouTube on the other hand is more or less a standalone, unless Google thinks otherwise.

Microsoft is also promoting "Soapbox Community", an online set of tools that allow users to discuss videos. The service will also be closely linked with Microsoft's Live Spaces.

Soapbox is currently available as a beta and is available on invitation-basis only. As per popular reviews there is nothing appealing with Soapbox that may lure YouTube users into taking it up. It remains to be seen if Soapbox integration with Live Spaces, Messenger does help Microsoft cut a share of the market.

Source: Microsoft's Soapbox takes on YouTube