MSN Video Service - MSN Soapbox

The top two search engines, Yahoo! and Google, have already developed a video directory for their users which has shown a little bit of success. It’s about time MSN enters the video industry with their new Soapbox Video service.

If you followed the above link, you can catch a sneak peek at the [tag]MSN Soapbox[/tag[ video interface and a funny little clip on the side!

MSN Soapbox is currently in it’s BETA mode and only sends invites to people who want to join. Their design looks extremely promising and it has the features which any other video archive offers:

Archives all the videos so others can find & view the videos
Allows users to place the MSN Soapbox embed on their pages
Easy uploading/downloading
Social commenting & rating of videos

At the moment there are five different video archives on the internet and MSN Soapbox has already jumped above Google Video in the rankings. According to Hitwise, here are the rankings for the video directories:

YouTube: 42.94%
MySpace Video: 24.22%
Yahoo! Video Search: 9.58%
MSN Video Search: 9.21%
Google Video: 6.48%

The outcome of MSN Soapbox’s success would depend on how great their tools and videos will be. Their interface for their users, like any other website, would also play an important role in their outcome.

However, cNet News begs to differ. They believe that MSN Soapbox is no threat to YouTube (which is what most people are assuming MSN Soapbox is targetting as their top competitor).

Technorati Tags: MSN, YouTube, Google Video