Microsoft Corp. has unveiled a public beta of its MSN Soapbox video-upload service, its competitor to Google Inc.'s popular YouTube service. The service, which Microsoft unveiled last September, has been available to beta testers only by invitation for several months. But now anyone can test out the service by going to this Web site , reports the the LiveSide blog , which tracks Microsoft's Windows Live Internet services. Like YouTube, Soapbox allows users not only to upload videos to the Web in almost any digital video format, but also to tag and categorize them so other users can find them. The service also lets users watch videos and browse for new ones simultaneously on the same screen, something that differentiates it from YouTube, Microsoft has said.
Microsoft has been assembling a raft of Web-based services to compete with Google and Yahoo Inc. since November 2005, when Chief Architect Ray Ozzie unveiled the company's Live services initiative. The company has said it would invest a significant amount of money in its Web efforts, and financial analysts expect Microsoft to give an update on this plan during a briefing with analysts in New York Thursday. Though many believe the Live services will replace Microsoft's MSN branded services, the company continues to maintain MSN as a site where it offers entertainment content, which may explain why it branded Soapbox with the MSN name rather than Live. The Live moniker refers more to actual services such as Windows Live e-mail, instant messaging and search.
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News source: InfoWorld
Microsoft has been assembling a raft of Web-based services to compete with Google and Yahoo Inc. since November 2005, when Chief Architect Ray Ozzie unveiled the company's Live services initiative. The company has said it would invest a significant amount of money in its Web efforts, and financial analysts expect Microsoft to give an update on this plan during a briefing with analysts in New York Thursday. Though many believe the Live services will replace Microsoft's MSN branded services, the company continues to maintain MSN as a site where it offers entertainment content, which may explain why it branded Soapbox with the MSN name rather than Live. The Live moniker refers more to actual services such as Windows Live e-mail, instant messaging and search.
View: The full story News source: InfoWorld
Alternatives are better.. because competition is good.
Glassed Silver:win
http://soapbox.msn.com/
i like mostly the way we can browse videos or read comments while still see the video
Maybe I'll compare it with IE7 instead. :X
edit: I just checked it out, it has become faster during the public beta. The videos didnt load this fast in the closed beta, good job Microsoft.
Microsoft is copying a lot nowadays, maybe it's better than YouTube, maybe it's has newer technologies, but YouTube is YouTube and no one is going to change! Even such big company like Microsoft.
(Right now I am listening to one nice song, which makes me more emotional)
There is, however, one problem: It's damn slow.
This may be because I'm at school. I can't get to YouTube to compare. But it's really obnoxious. The way it loads is also obnoxious. When you load a video on YouTube, you can watch up to what has streamed so far. With Soapbox, if you want to rewind (or perform any other basic tape function,) you have to wait for it to rebuffer, which I really hate.
It's a nice idea. It looks pretty cool. But it is still in the Beta stages, and hopefully they can polish off their delivery mechanism. Probably a false hope.
Oh well.
After testing it out a few times, two tests timed out going on 45 seconds before I refreshed it to reload it. I know it wasn't my internet either because I checked other websites to make sure it's running, and YouTube and Neowin loaded just fine while Soapbox had timed out.
After refreshing though, it took a full 10 seconds before it could complete loading. 8.5 seconds when the left side navigation finished loading, and another 1.5 before the right flash or whatever on the right finished.
They really need to do something with it before I would even consider using it.
So then why spend time to develop the site? The only reason i can think of is the "we can do that to" mentality that seems prevalent with Microsoft's online services. I cant help thinking that the time taken to develop this could be better used elsewhere to make something really compelling.
Does the internet really need another video sharing site? The only sites that get any traffic apart from Youtube are those that host copy written material. It just seems a totally pointless exercise to me :/
They are trying to achieve market dominance. They have to barge in on every little piece of anything out there. It's what they do. It's who they are.
Am I the only one who thinks content on sites like MetaCafe, iFilm (which had the best quality Tenacious D movie trailer), and DailyMotion is decent, and the sites are worth visiting from time to time?
That being said, Joe Rogan totally kicked Mencia's comedic ass. It's good to be able to watch it on iFilm because YouTube is blocked at my school.
Now, Google owns YouTube, so it makes it fair game for Microsoft to compete with anyway (not that Google Video wasnt enough reason), since Google, is seen as a competitor to Microsoft's MSN service.
Second, when people say "all Microsoft does is copy" they're thinking of Microsoft as a single entity. The impetus to do this comes from their MSN/Live divisions, whose job is to compete with companies like Google and YouTube. Maybe Microsoft as a company shouldn't be in this area, but they are.
Ok, lets talk about Zune. Microsoft already had partnerships with many manufacters. WMV partnerships with many companies before the iPod was released. Then they created partnerships for PMC devices, many of which had features iPod didn't have untill recently (like video and pictures--things Jobs once said people didn't want on an iPod). The 'copying' bit you're talking about is deciding to release their own hardware in partnership with Toshiba.
See how things aren't that simple? People will realize one day, that no matter what good things have come from Apple... that the reason for Apple's success where its sucessful is marketing.
You also talk as if Microsoft hasn't released anything that other people are trying to copy. I invite you to think over that.
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LAWL learn2code for web MS.
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