MSN Soapbox in Public Beta

Microsoft Corp has unveiled its new video sharing site, MSN Soapbox Beta, as s direct response to YouTube’s popularity. The service, which has been in private beta since September 2006, is finally made accessible to Internet users but without making too many changes from the previous version.

Microsoft has integrated MSN with the service in such a way, that it uses Windows Media Player to display the video content to Internet Explorer users, but Flash player to display content to non-MSN users. The user interface is a tad different from the better known YouTube, as it allows users to browse videos on the left side and play the selected video on the right side of the interface, simultaneously. Soapbox users will be able to upload videos while watching a video on the right, and even continue uploading at the top while browsing for videos on the left in a three-way multitasking fashion. Also, users have the ability to upload more videos than one at the same time. It would be interesting to see MSN integrate its messenger service and Hotmail along with Soapbox, but there’s no sign of that yet.

Besides multitasking, Soapbox offers the ability to upload videos of any length, as compared to the limited 10 minutes for YouTube users. The service accepts 13 file types and still has a file size cap of 100MB.While Soapbox videos are free to watch by non-MSN users, only users with a Windows Live ID can comment on and upload new videos.

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Research firms estimate that Google Video and YouTube together, give Google approximately 51 per cent of the online video market. Social networking site MySpace is the next, with nearly 20 per cent of the market, followed by AOL with six per cent.