I had a chance to see a video on SoapBox, Microsoft’s response to YouTube, today and boy — it does look cool. But you know what Microsoft? I doubt that you will be able to make it as popular or profitable as YouTube.

And why would I make a statement like that? Because you guys forgot the very small things that make YouTube so viral.

1. You don’t make it easy to share videos. No doubt you have a share button but where are the share codes on the landing page.

2. You guys provide a text link at the bottom of the video to go to the landing page. And what does YouTube do? You click anywhere on video except the play button, you land on the video page at YouTube, where you can see the comments and related videos.

3. That reminds me — Why NO comments feature or social networking features?

4. And most important of all — why no related videos on the landing page? I end up viewing a lot more videos on YouTube than just what I went there to see — all because of the related video features.

Now listen up MS — if you want soapbox to be a success, don’t just make it prettier than YouTube but rather make it more viral and get a better sense of community. Otherwise, all you will end up being is a free video host for bloggers and the biggest bandwidth burner in the whole MS empire without being much of an earner.