Tout Launches First Network for Real-Time Video Status Updates

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Apr 12, 2011, 10:00 ET

SAN FRANCISCO, April 12, 2011 /PRNewswire/ -- What Twitter brought to text-based communications online, Tout is now delivering via video – a vibrant community of people instantly updating their Facebook friends and Twitter followers with short video status updates captured via their smartphones.

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The Tout application is now available for free download at the iPhone App store, and once downloaded enables users to point, shoot and share short, real-time "video status updates" with friends. At the Tout website (www.tout.com), users can follow family, friends or people with shared interests and get real-time updates as they "Tout" moments from their lives. Each Tout -- a short smartphone video of 15 seconds or less provides a streamlined way to connect, communicate, update status and engage with friends and followers.

"Some moments in life just can't be reflected in text. Tout delivers "life as it happens" in full-motion color and sound, as opposed to 'life as it's written in 140 characters or less,'" explains Tout founder and CEO Michael Downing. "Not everybody has witty and well-crafted writing skills to express themselves in blogs or Tweets, but we all have unique visual perspective and, these perspectives will be the basis of a new form of conversation and storytelling moving forward."

The Tout experience draws on the emerging consumer behavioral movement called "visual conversation," a distinctly more human, natural way to socially connect online. Visual conversation draws from the converging trends of the ubiquitous ability to capture media anywhere on the fly with smartphones, blend billions of visual elements already on the web that can be re-mixed/mashed into new messages, and the primal ability to quickly process visual media. The result is a hyper-expressive ecosystem of high-engagement activity, unencumbered by complex barriers-to-participation.

Tout has been testing the application for the last month with a small group of influential personalities from the technology and entertainment industries. "Being able to give my followers and friends an instantaneous window into my world, literally enabling them to see what I see, is incredibly powerful; it lets me build new kinds of relationships with my community," said Stephen Fishbach, finalist on CBS's Survivor.

"Services like Tout represent the media wave of the future. Tout rides a fast-moving trend that's being propelled by our 'I like to watch' culture, an Ubertrend I've dubbed 'Voyeurgasm,'" said Michael Tchong, analyst at Ubercool.

All About Tout

Tout, based in San Francisco, is a social communications network that enables people to instantly update Facebook friends and Twitter followers with short video Status Updates captured via your smartphone. Tout is a technology spin-out of SRI (Stanford Research Institute). Tout's investors include Horizons Ventures, the investment arm of Hong Kong-based billionaire Li Ka-Shing who invested $120MM in Facebook, New York-based Seavest Venture Capital, and Anduin Ventures. Life is all about perspective, Tout it!

For more information on Tout:

www.Tout.com

Tout on Twitter

Tout on Facebook

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PedRP4AosHA

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