Shaq O'Neal Retires Via Tout; Congrats To Michael Downing

On Wednesday, Shaq - or Shaquille O'Neal - retired via Twitter and Tout, but really, the big story is that the legendary NBA Center and most of all LA Laker, did it via Tout.

This blogger's introduction to Tout came in an email from a friend: Michael Downing. Michael's a serial entrepreneur best known for GoFish and for TransMedia Capital.

Until now.

I met Michael one late Thursday night four years ago at the Balboa Cafe in San Francisco's Marina District, and as many frequent readers of my blogs know, one of my favorite hangs.

Our conversation started with him asking me what business I was in, and my reply was "Internet." We proceeded to a talk so long we left after the Balboa closed.

Yep. After.

We stayed in touch, and then, on March 30th of 2010, I received an email from the man who's now "Entrepreneur in Residence at Stanford Research Institute." This one:

Zennie


I hope you are well – and my apologies for the random email coming end-of-day, but I wanted to reach out and personally invite you to a brief sneak-peek of Tout – the new company I co-founded in partnership with SRI (Stanford Research Institute) this last year.


Tout is all about delivering a new kind of social-communications-experience enabling people to share their unique perspective on life through simple, short video updates from their smartphones.


We are launching Tout.com to the world in less than 1 week, and in advance of that date, I am personally inviting about 100 of the most interesting people I know in technology, media and entertainment to give it a test-drive.


If you want to be a part of the Sneak-Peek before launch, here’s what you need to do:


1. You need an iPhone 3GS or 4… if your on Android or BlackBerry we will be launching those versions shortly


2. Go to (My Tracking URL) hit Sign-Up-Now in upper right of page


3. Once your register with an email address and password, you will get a verification email – be sure to click “confirm your account” link to verify


4. On your iPhone, go to the APP Store and get the TOUT application (from Tout Industries)

My problem was I had not an iPhone, but a Samsung Galaxy Variant Smartphone. Just the perfect Android phone that Tout wasn't yet ready for at the time. But, and this is a big "but," I could add a link from my YouTube videos, and, at 1,470 videos and counting, I've got a lot of them.

Michael wrote:

Zennie


We gotta get you going
let's talk tomorrow - we got some great blogger/celebrities prepping now, you would be perfect
'555-555-5555.'


Let me know when u can chat tomorrow

So I tried to track Michael down via phone, and in the interim joined, created a channel, and actually posted a Tout from my Georgia Down YouTube video.

Which for some reason that may be related to the slick new website design, isn't there any more; so I had to install new YouTube video links.   

But the Shaq announcement explains why I'd not got a call from Downing after the emails.

I was tossed for Shaq.

Wait. I was tossed FOR Shaq?!

Cool!

Nice work Michael!