Microsoft joined the Internet Video sites today with its launch of Microsoft Soapbox. The new free Internet video site, offering free Internet video clips contributed by users, like YouTube and YouTube owner Google’s Google Video, hopes to capture YouTube viewers’ hearts and allegiance. On first glance, Microsoft Soapbox looks like YouTube and Google Video in the ways that you would expect. But is Microsoft Soapbox similar to YouTube enough to really be a contender? And is “similar to YouTube” enough, or does it need to be far better?
On first glance, Microsoft Soapbox looks like YouTube and Google Video in the ways that you would expect. It allows users to view free Internet video posted by other users; it allows users to upload and post free Internet video (note, Google Video actually allows some level of users to charge to view the full video they have posted).
And in fact, Microsoft Soapbox is similar to YouTube and Google Videos in most ways that most users would notice. The differences are primarily in the technical aspects.
News.com’s Rafe Needleman complained that “In sum, Soapbox is disappointing. It’s a slightly better sharing service than YouTube in some small technical ways…”, although he did like that you could upload to Soapbox in the background without needing a separate application such as Google Video requires.
And observes Greg Bulmash over at [Page no longer available – we have linked to the archive.org version instead], ” Microsoft’s upload procedure is definitely nicer than Google’s. Even using FireFox on a Mac, it showed me my actual upload progress (instead of Google’s “uploadingâ€? with a couple of colored balls rolling back and forth) and worked very easily.” He also noted that “Overall, it seems that Microsoft is presenting a better picture quality and a better user interface than Google, better quality and similar interface to YouTube, and they’re accepting a wider range of video encodings than YouTube.” (Read Greg’s [Page no longer available – we have linked to the archive.org version instead].)
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Of course, we all need to remember that Microsoft Soapbox is in beta, so who knows where it will end up!
Here’s what the homepage looks like:
You can check out [Page no longer available – we have linked to the archive.org version instead].
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It seemed OK. You really need to check out the French missile one though. It is absolutely hilarious.