Zannel is an online mobile instant messaging service with a focus on video.  The company announced that they have raised $10 million in Series B from Alloy Ventures, U.S. Venture Partners, and Palomar Ventures.  The mobile version of their site is available at http://wap.zannel.com.

Last month, Zannel won the 2008 Webby Award for Best Mobile Social Network.  This is impressive considering that they are competing directly with YouTube Mobile.  I tested videos on both Zannel mobile and YouTube mobile and found more success in playing videos with Zannel.

Zannel also has photo sharing and pic chat built in.  Videos can be sorted by most recent, most discussed, recently active, most favorited, and top rated.  Zannel’s mobile platform also looks sleek on an iPhone, but then again what doesn’t?

Zannel’s blog is available at: http://press.zannel.com/category/blog/.  The company has raised a total of $16 million in funding.

Information Source:
[1] SiliconTap.com: Zannel Raises $10M

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 contest 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,” quoted 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 are received via SMS messages. Instead of travelling 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.