Microsoft announced soapbox back in September 2006. Now they opened their Youtube buster to the general public.

I must say the interface is very pretty. Microsoft did a good job designing this. Content blows. I am not sure why Microsoft is not more aggressive and gets out and makes a couple deals with movie and TV studios to put some free stuff in there too boot.
We actually have some videos on soapbox since a long time, as our reporter Jack Olmsted already fooled around with soapbox.

soapbox is still in beta by the way. I experienced strange behavior with the video player while fast forwarding and rewinding - still a bit jumpy this player. It is a Flash based video player, maybe the MS engineers have not enough experience with Flash. Microsoft still does not have an alternative for this Adobe product.

It is actually interesting how Flash came back. A year or two ago, I had the feeling it would just go away, but then came online video.

We will see how the content on soapbox develops. A shiny user interface is not enough.

Visit the soapbox here.