My cousin, Tanay Bhatia, a Software Engineer for Microsoft introduced me to the world of of MSN Soapbox by providing me with an invitation.  I can tell you right off the bat that there are some great features with Soapbox that will cause you to ask yourself, “why doesn’t YouTube have this?” 

Feature #1: The first feature is one that is unheard of with any other video sharing website.  MSN Soapbox gives you the opportunity to upload videos as a background process while you browse the website.  This means that while you are logged into Soapbox and uploading a video, you can browse other videos on the website in the same window.  When I was uploading a video, I accidentally clicked on a link that took me out of the MSN Soapbox page, but when I returned, I discovered that the video was uploading from where I left off.  My video was successfully uploaded without having to re-upload it in one go:

Feature #2: Although I didn’t get a chance to test feature #2, I read about it on the Soapbox on the MSN Video blog.  MSN Soapbox videos can be embedded on website or blogs and playlists of videos can be customized for this embedded video.  I have not heard of this feature anywhere else either.

Feature #3: Navigation.  On YouTube and Google Video, when you want to browse for categories, you have to leave the video that you are currently watching.  With MSN Soapbox, you do not have to leave the page. You can browse through categories, tags, and other features until you select another video to watch:
 

Feature #4: Use of tags.  To help users find videos that they may be interested in seeing, MSN Soapbox allows you to “browse tags” and displays the most popular/searched tags.  Bigger text for certain tags indicate the tags that are more frequently searched.

Feature #5: When you move your mouse of the thumbnail of a video, the text of the video description appears.  This gives the user a better idea of what the video is about before having MSN Soapbox load it up:
 

Feature #6: Connected to MSN Passport.  Since I always leave my Windows Live Messenger IM software on this means I am connected to my Microsoft Passport and because of that, Soapbox instantly logs me into my account without asking me to type in my username and password.  Of course, this could also be a disadvantage for users that allow family or friends to use their laptops or desktops while connected to Windows Live Messenger because these other users would be able to access the primary user’s Soapbox page.  For me, this is not a problem since I am the only one that uses this laptop so I see this as an advantage because it saves me time.

Feature #7:  Supports many data types.  After reading through the MSN Soapbox FAQ, I found that you can upload many different video file types for the video to be uploaded properly.  Here is a list of them: AVI, ASF, WMV, MOV, MPEG ½/4, 3GPP, DV, H.263, H.264.

Feature #8: Utilization of RSS feeds.  Every user has an RSS feed that people can subscribe to so that it can be plugged into customized pages which notifies users when new content is uploaded.  Users can also implement an RSS feed of their favorite videos as well.  I know for those people who visited lonelygirl15 on YouTube often, this is a feature that they could appreciate.

Feature #9: Rate/Tag/Comment any video.  I know that Google Video has also recently implemented a feature where users that have not uploaded a particular video can tag that video with certain keywords in case they felt that it needed to be added.  But every user on MSN Soapbox can rate videos on a 5-star scale, comment on any video, and enter tags for the videos.

Feature #10: Future integration with other Microsoft products.  Microsoft lacks a problem that Google is known for.  Google develops technologies or acquires companies too fast and then asks the questions about what to do with them later.  Given the products and services that Microsoft has released under the Live alias, you figure that Ray Ozzie and Bill Gates sat down before Gates retired and mapped out how everything will connect.  I’m anxious to see if Soapbox has the possibility of being integrated with Zune.  I’m sure J. Allard has something up his sleeve for that one.