This post was published 3 years 16 days ago and its content may not be valid anymore.

Once in awhile, I check my dusty Hotmail inbox (who doesn’t have a Hotmail account?) to find beta invites from MSN – today’s particular invite was for Microsofts latest video sharing service known as Soapbox. The latest video sharing service offers a free platform for users to share a wide variety of video formats – AVI, ASF, WMV, MOV, MPEG 1/2/4, 3GP, 3G2, SWF, DV – with other Soapbox users. In addition, the service provides embeddable code for sharing video content on personal blogs, sites, or social network profiles. The service offers everything the current reigning champ YouTube offers – video sharing, commenting, categories (tags), and emailing. The question is what will entice users to adopt Soapbox over say… YouTube? View more pics of the service after the jump.

Personally, I think Microsoft would have been a little more successful getting a solid foothold in the video sharing arena had the wallet been pulled out in order to purchase an existing service.