Mobile Social Video Network Zannel Now In Beta

By Amit Chowdhry ● Mar 11, 2007

Last June, Menlo Park, Calif. based Zannel secured $6 million in funding from Palomar Ventures and U.S. Ventures. Zannel provides distribution for uploaded videos via mobile social networking. There are many big names that are going after the service that Zannel is providing.

Frank Miller’s 300 (“Spartans! Enjoy your breakfast, for tonight we dine in Hell!”) has a deal with Zannel. Also, Warner Bros., X Prize, Konami, Mini Cooper, Xtreme Video, and music promoter, Tenth Street Entertainment also have advertising deals with Zannel.

“Zannel fills a gap left by MySpace,” said Josh Scheiner, Tenth Street Entertainment’s Director of New Media. “We want to work on establishing a community that can connect on mobile phones.”

Zannel sends videos through a P2P network and is received via SMS message. Instead of traveling between MMS, videos delivered through Zannel runs through servers to determine phone compatibility. Once a user clicks on an SMS message on their phone, then the video is streamed on their mobile phone as long as it is compatible.

One of the Zannel co-founders, Steve Hoffman was awarded as one of the “Digital 50” Television Academy Members.