Head Tale

Tout is a new social media site that combines elements of Facebook, Twitter and YouTube to allow you to do 15-second video status updates.

“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.”

Who knows if it’ll take off (when I first heard about Twitter, I thought it was the stupidest thing I’ve ever seen too!) but I’m not going to miss the ball on this one.

So far, it’s interesting just to log in and stream their Latest Uploads section (which they call The Highway) to see glimpses of people and events all over the world (though since I’m doing this post on a Friday night, it seems everybody is out partying right now…except me!  In fact, I would’ve added my own Tout to supplement this post – and also to counter the non-stop clips of people at bars and concerts on The Highway right now with a clip of a dad who’s just put his crying son back to bed.  But I see that the site is configured so that you can’t upload directly from a laptop webcam right now – only from an iPhone or existing YouTube clip, presumably so that the clips are a bit more lively instead just a bunch of videos from people sitting on their couches…which is exactly where I am right now!)