MSN today announced the U.S. beta release of Soapbox on MSN Video, a user-uploaded video service that makes it easy for people to express themselves by uploading, discovering and sharing personal videos with the Soapbox community and others around the world. Soapbox will be available on MSN Video and will be deeply integrated throughout Microsofts portfolio of online services, including Windows Live Spaces and Windows Live Messenger.

“Soapbox delivers on a critical component of the MSN growth strategy of deepening audience engagement by enabling people to participate in the content experience,” said Rob Bennett, general manager of Entertainment and Video Services for MSN. “By adding a user-uploaded video service, we are rounding out our existing investments in commercially produced and original content on MSN Video.”

Soapbox on MSN Video utilizes powerful Web 2.0 technologies to provide a dynamic, fun and entertaining experience and offers these benefits:

• Easy uploading and sharing of video creations. By providing single-step uploading, background server-side video processing and acceptance of all major digital video formats, Soapbox makes uploading videos a snap.
• Finding and discovering the most entertaining videos. Viewers can search, browse through 15 categories, find related videos, subscribe to RSS feeds, and share their favorites with their friends all without interrupting whatever video they are watching.
• Participation in the Soapbox community. Soapbox users can rate, comment on and tag the videos they view, share links with their friends via e-mail, and include the embeddable Soapbox player directly on their Web site or blog.

But is Microsoft to late, have they missed the Boat? or has the boat not even left yet and they will become the next big YouTube competitor?

Well one things for sure is that it’s going to be interesting to see what becomes of MSN Soapbox, especially for us beta testers like me and other beta testers because we will see it change over time to hopefuly include suggestions we have made.

However the beta of Soapbox on MSN Video is available on an invitation-only basis in the U.S. so tose of you interested in participating in the beta can sign up for the waiting list now at http://soapbox.msn.com. And later access to the beta will expand over time by enabling existing beta testers to invite a limited number of friends. The beta of Soapbox on MSN Video is available to users of Microsoft Internet Explorer 6 or later running on Windows XP and Firefox 1.0.5 or later running on Windows XP or Macintosh OS X.