Why WWE's Weird Tout Experiment Was A Total Flop

WWE may be a wrestling company first and foremost, but the promotion, specifically under the stewardship of former Chairman Vince McMahon, has never been afraid of experimenting outside the wrestling ring. Unfortunately, that experimentation rarely resulted in anything that had staying power. The most common examples are the World Bodybuilding Federation or the XFL, even though those two projects and their failures were more a McMahon thing than a WWE thing. What were WWE related experiments however were the WWF New York, also known as The World, the WWE themed restaurant/nightclub that operated for four years before closing its doors, or WWE Studios, the promotion's attempt at entering the film industry that ultimately crashed and burned.

But a WWE experiment that many may not remember, at least as much as those, is Tout. The name will likely sound familiar though, especially if you're a fan of early 2010s social media trends and WWE's product around that time. With sites like Facebook and The Artist Formerly Known as Twitter all the rage at the time, Tout, whose technology was originally created while under the banner of the nonprofit SRI Institute, launched in April 2010, aiming to be a service focused on social networking and microblogging through 15 second videos. It was a year before Tout began gaining notoriety, however, which happened when NBA star, and future AEW wrestler, Shaquille O'Neal used the platform to announce his retirement from basketball in June 2011. Even then though, it would be over a year before WWE got involved, investing $5 million into the company, and beginning a two-year working relationship that even saw Stephanie McMahon become part of Tout's board of directors.

So what exactly went wrong between WWE and Tout? First, it should be asked why WWE felt the need to partner up with the platform, as the promotion already had a presence on the aforementioned Facebook and Twitter. At best guess, the initiative seemed to be WWE's attempt of establishing their own social media brand, with the hope that they could make it as big as the others through WWE wrestlers pumping out 15 second videos. And to be fair, WWE did try their best to make it happen, both by having their talent Tout as much as possible, along with heavy promotion of the service during their broadcasts of "Raw" and "SmackDown." It may have worked as well, if not for the fact that Tout's moment came at the same time that similar social media platforms such as Vine and Instagram were gaining steam, quickly overtaking Tout in the food chain.

As such, by the time 2013 had rolled around, it became apparent that the WWE/Tout alliance wasn't working. So WWE did the only thing they could do; they pulled the plug, slowly disassociating itself from service. References to Tout were largely discontinued on WWE TV, and the promotion's love affair with Tout faded away like a distant memory, which was in a way weird because the two sides still had a year remaining on their working agreement. Once that ended in 2014, however, WWE kept running and never looked back. Tout actually managed to stay alive for some level afterward, but made no further headway before officially closing in 2019. In hindsight, it may have been a decade early, as the rise of TikTok showed there was an audience for shorter video content. But in the early 2010s, all Tout proved to be was another WWE experiment gone wrong.