• Sidebar: MSN Versus Windows Live

End users will supply the content for two forthcoming online services: MSN Soapbox, a video-posting service that will compete against the suddenly popular YouTube, and Windows Live QnA, a question-answering service. Both services entered public betas toward the end of summer 2006 but had very little content. The initial lack of content could create a cycle in which sparse content discourages visitors and the lack of visitors discourages those who post content, so Microsoft will attempt to guide users to Soapbox and QnA from its established online services.

MSN Soapbox

User-posted video is one of the fastest-growing categories on the Internet: YouTube, which launched in Dec. 2005, has already become the 40th most popular site in the United States, with more than 15 million monthly visitors in July 2006 (according to ComScore), an increase of 20% over the previous month. Microsoft's two most important online competitors, Google and Yahoo, both have video-posting services, and other startups, such as Revvup, also compete in the space.

In Sept. 2006, Microsoft entered the fray with an invitation-only beta for MSN Soapbox. The service is a new part of MSN Video, which launched in Jan. 2004 with licensed content (such as reality TV shows and clips from MSNBC) and has proven popular among advertisers—new inventory on the service sells immediately, according to Rob Bennett, the general manager of MSN Entertainment. Microsoft will not sell advertisements on MSN Soapbox, although MSN editors may eventually choose interesting or popular videos to repost to an advertising-supported section of the site. (For more information on the fate of the MSN brand, see "MSN Versus Windows Live".)

Like competing services, Soapbox lets users upload videos of up to 100MB in size (with no length limit) and provide a brief description. Soapbox visitors can find videos by browsing through 15 categories or searching for keywords, play (but not download) them, comment on them, and embed them in other Web pages (such as blogs). Users can report inappropriate or copyrighted content, and Microsoft will remove that content immediately.

Soapbox also has a better user interface than YouTube in some respects: for example, videos continue to play in a separate pane even as users perform other tasks, such as posting comments or searching for other videos.

However, Soapbox will have a difficult time competing against YouTube because of network effects: users know that YouTube has a large collection of user-posted videos, while posters know that it has a large audience looking for those videos. To overcome this disadvantage, Microsoft must quickly build a user base for Soapbox. To achieve this, it will employ the same tactic that helped Windows Live Spaces grow to more than 100 million monthly users less than two years after launch: every time a user posts a new video, that user's Messenger contacts will see a "gleam" next to his name, enabling Messenger's more than 200 million global monthly users to discover the service.

To ensure easy posting and a wide audience, Microsoft will support many non-Microsoft technologies: users can post video in nearly every popular digital video format (not just Windows Media Video) and can play Soapbox videos on all browsers that support Flash (not just Internet Explorer).

Sign up for the public beta of MSN Soapbox at soapbox.msn.com.

Windows Live QnA

In Aug. 2006, Microsoft launched the public beta of Windows Live QnA, which allows users to post and answer questions on any subject and to vote on the best answer to any given question. Over time, users will earn stars for participation (e.g., five points for answering a question, 20 points for posting the best answer), giving new users a quick way to identify the most relevant postings.

QnA, which at one time was known as Windows Live Answers, competes with Yahoo Answers and a wide variety of startups, such as AnswerBag, Ask Metafilter, Oyogi, and Wondir, none of which pay users to post answers. Google Answers is a similar service that employs subject-matter experts who receive payment for their answers, rather than relying on ordinary end users to answer questions.

Like Soapbox, QnA will become useful only as its user base grows, and thus it will also rely on other Microsoft properties for traffic: a gleam will appear in Messenger when a user's contact has posted or answered a question, and a module for Windows Live Spaces will give users an easy way to post lists of their QnA questions and answers to their Spaces site.

Check out the Windows Live QnA beta at qna.live.com.