STAMFORD, Conn., July 11, 2012 – WWE (NYSE:WWE) announced today an investment in and strategic partnership with Tout Industries, Inc. that will leverage WWE’s vast array of assets, including television, live events, digital, print and more than 100 million social media followers to expand Tout’s platform for real-time video status updates, creating a new dynamic social experience for WWE fans.
Beginning July 23 during the historic 1,000th episode of Monday Night Raw, WWE fans will have the chance to be seen and heard via Tout as real-time video updates will be featured during WWE television programming, on WWE.com, throughout WWE’s social media presence and on in-arena video displays. WWE Superstars will also interact with fans via Tout question and answer sessions leading up to the event. Additionally, WWE will launch “Tout Tuesdays” giving fans the opportunity to discuss what happened the previous night on Monday Night Raw. Tout’s new platform will enable WWE to aggregate all of this unique content on WWE.com.
“WWE is in a class by itself as a media giant who has innovatively grown their business through social media,” said Michael Downing, CEO of Tout. “We could not envision a better partner to show how the Tout platform powers high-impact, real-time engagement across broadcast TV, digital and live events.”
“WWE looks forward to partnering with Tout to grow this innovative social media platform,” said Vince McMahon, WWE Chairman and CEO. “Tout’s real-time video technology will become a critical component of fan interactivity in our weekly television programming and will be utilized to connect WWE directly with our fans in new ways.”
Tout is a social media platform that allows users to easily shoot 15-second video status updates via smartphones and webcams. Touts are published real-time and automatically to Tout.com, Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest, SMS and email contacts. Through Tout’s reply feature, users can engage in Tout conversations.
WWE is one of the most socially active brands with more than 100 million social media followers, one billion video views on YouTube and an average of 50 trending topics every week on Twitter.
About WWE
WWE, a publicly traded company (NYSE: WWE), is an integrated media organization and recognized leader in global entertainment. The company consists of a portfolio of businesses that create and deliver original content 52 weeks a year to a global audience. WWE is committed to family friendly entertainment on its television programming, pay-per-view, digital media and publishing platforms. WWE programming is broadcast in more than 145 countries and 30 languages and reaches more than 600 million homes worldwide. The company is headquartered in Stamford, Conn., with offices in New York, Los Angeles, Miami, London, Mumbai, Shanghai, Singapore, Istanbul and Tokyo.
Additional information on WWE (NYSE: WWE) can be found at wwe.com and corporate.wwe.com. For information on our global activities, go to http://www.wwe.com/worldwide/.
About Tout
Headquartered in San Francisco, Tout is a social media technology company whose smartphone and Web applications enable real-time video status updates that can be shared instantly with friends, family or the whole world through Facebook, Twitter, or even published to your own site via the Tout Widget and API. Tout enables users to capture and share 15-second videos with 2-clicks from the Web, iPhone, iPad or Android smartphones. Tout is a technology spin-out of SRI (Stanford Research Institute), responsible for such innovations as intelligent personal assistant technology SIRI acquired by Apple. Since launch, Tout has had over 23 million visitors to its application, making it one of the fastest growing social media services. Visit www.tout.com or follow us on Facebook and on Twitter @Tout.
