Cnet takes Microsoft's user-generated video site, Soapbox, for a drive and says that it's generally solid, but with a few problems. It isn't the most innovative service, Rafe Needleman writes, and will succeed only if Microsoft can get its other users (notably the people who use the Spaces blogging service) to adopt it. We wrote about Soapbox's debut Tuesday.

In sum, Soapbox is disappointing. 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.