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Soapbox - Microsoft's answer to YouTube - has gone into public beta after having been open only to select beta testers since September.

Soapbox is Microsoft's latest attempt to compete with similar web-based offerings from Google and Yahoo. As with YouTube, Soapbox allows users to upload videos to the site in most digital video formats, as well as tag and categorize them so other users can find them, MacWorld reports.

A key feature that Soapbox adds, and which YouTube can't (yet) match, is the ability to let users watch one video while searching for another - on the same screen.