Soapbox on MSN Video was a service from

Microsoft Microsoft Corporation is an American multinational technology corporation producing computer software, consumer electronics, personal computers, and related services headquartered at the Microsoft Redmond campus located in Redmond, Washin ...

offered via its

MSN MSN (meaning Microsoft Network) is a web portal and related collection of Internet services and apps for Windows and mobile devices, provided by Microsoft and launched on August 24, 1995, alongside the release of Windows 95. The Microsoft Net ...

portal. It was similar to

YouTube YouTube is a global online video sharing and social media platform headquartered in San Bruno, California. It was launched on February 14, 2005, by Steve Chen, Chad Hurley, and Jawed Karim. It is owned by Google, and is the second mo ...

in that it was an internet video-sharing service. In order to upload content, users were required to sign up for a

Windows Live ID A Microsoft account or MSA (previously known as Microsoft Passport, .NET Passport, and Windows Live ID) is a single sign-on Microsoft user account for Microsoft customers to log in to Microsoft services (like Outlook.com), devices running on on ...

, if they did not already have one. The site launched a public beta in February 2007. On June 16, 2009, Microsoft said that they planned to scale back Soapbox, citing tough economic conditions. Uploads to the service ended on July 21, 2009, and in August 2009, the service officially retired. Soapbox used an interface heavily dependent on

JavaScript JavaScript (), often abbreviated as JS, is a programming language that is one of the core technologies of the World Wide Web, alongside HTML and CSS. As of 2022, 98% of websites use JavaScript on the client side for webpage behavior, of ...

and

AJAX Ajax may refer to: Greek mythology and tragedy * Ajax the Great, a Greek mythological hero, son of King Telamon and Periboea * Ajax the Lesser, a Greek mythological hero, son of Oileus, the king of Locris * ''Ajax'' (play), by the ancient Gree ...

. The original codename for the project was Warhol, the Soapbox name being subsequently chosen by an intern during the summer of 2006. Soapbox on

MSN Video MSN (meaning Microsoft Network) is a web portal and related collection of Internet services and apps for Windows and mobile devices, provided by Microsoft and launched on August 24, 1995, alongside the release of Windows 95. The Microsoft Ne ...

differed from other video sites as it offered features such as RSS. Users also did not need to open a new window to continue using the site and browsing videos when they were uploading a video of their own. The last version of Soapbox was available in

American English American English, sometimes called United States English or U.S. English, is the set of varieties of the English language native to the United States. English is the most widely spoken language in the United States and in most circumstances i ...

; service and upload instructions are also in English. There were, however, plans for language availability to be widened in the future. Videos were shown at 400 x 300 pixels by default, but could be expanded to play in full screen. Soapbox played videos using

Windows Media Player Windows Media Player (WMP) is the first media player (application software), media player and media library application that was developed by Microsoft for playing sound reproduction, audio, video and viewing images on personal computers runnin ...

plug-in when loaded with

Internet Explorer Internet Explorer (formerly Microsoft Internet Explorer and Windows Internet Explorer, commonly abbreviated IE or MSIE) is a series of graphical web browsers developed by Microsoft which was used in the Windows line of operating systems ( ...

, while videos loaded in other browsers were displayed with

Adobe Flash Player Adobe Flash Player (known in Internet Explorer, Firefox, and Google Chrome as Shockwave Flash) is computer software for viewing multimedia contents, executing rich Internet applications, and streaming audio and video content created on the ...

References

Defunct video on demand services Former video hosting services {{microsoft-stub

See also

References