Microsoft's Video Site 'Soapbox' Disappointing

nieske writes "CNet reviews Microsoft's new video site, Soapbox. Though browsing and uploading is easy, CNet isn't very enthusiastic about the beta, mostly blaming this on the fact that Soapbox has nothing more to offer than other video sites. From the article: 'It's a slightly better sharing service than YouTube in some small technical ways, but it doesn't help users make money from their content like Revver does; it doesn't have granular privacy controls like Vox; it won't post directly into blogs for you like VideoEgg; and it won't show videos from other networks like Yahoo Video. Given Microsoft's position in the video sharing market (dead last), I expected a more aggressive product.'"

Comments

The Fruit, the Window & the Penguin

[eldavojohn]

Curious - where does the above fit in here?

The fact that you can't watch Yahoo Videos through Soapbox (as the summary mentioned).

Plus, you really don't know what's going on in the background. I mean, usually that tactic is what follows the release of the software. I'm guessing Microsoft has someone in mind to provide ads, storage, etc. The fact that it's not something you can incorporate into blog sites is also a little evidence they won't play ball with anyone.

As for playing to the lowest common denominator, I thought that was supposed to be Apple's shtick?

As a pretty avid Linux user, it's been my opinion that both MS and Apple aim to do this ... just in different ways (media versus gaming). And that might change with Apple's architecture switch. This LCD-ness is what Linux lacks (Ubuntu's getting close), right now it seems (again, in my opinion) that the sheer lack of open drivers for devices and PCI cards make this damn near impossible. There's also the debate about the heart of Linux and whether or not we want it to be as simple as plug-n-play. Either way, I hope someone makes a distro where you never see the guts and it attempts to take advantage of any drivers, open or not. Not so I would use it but so that someone with less time on their hands might be able to.