Zannel: Your One Stop Update Shop
The men of Zannel, Braxton Woodham, CTO; Adam Zbar, CEO; Harry Evans, VP Technology
Zannel allows users to instantly share their personal updates, videos and photos to all their favorite social sites, including Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, Flickr, WordPress, Typepad and more. One update hits all of the sites you have linked to Zannel. It won a Webby in 2008 and was founded by Adam Zbar, CEO, Braxton Woodham, CTO, Harry Evans, VP Technology, and Steve Hoffman, former COO. Here is my Q&A with Adam and Braxton who couldn’t attend Internet Week this year due to the Zannel demands, but agreed to a cross-country interview with me, anyway.
Kelly Will: Who developed the program and how long did it take you guys to perfect it?
Adam Zbar: The product/platform was built by the development team that built the largest mobile media/ring tone platform in North America. They have been working together in the mobile space since 2001. Key team members include Braxton Woodham, CTO, Harry Evans, VP Technology, Scott Bendar, VP of Engineering, and John Yin, VP of Product. The initial platform was completed in eight months, and has been refined over the past 2.5 years based on input from our users and partners.
KW: What phones have you created apps for so far?
Braxton Woodham: Zannel has developed the iPhone App for major artists to stay connected with their fans on and off tour. The artist-branded app allows fans to view exclusive multimedia updates from the artist, to follow the tour on a map, and to purchase tickets, music and merchandise. Zannel is currently porting our app to the Palm Pre, Blackberry, and Android platforms. The mobile website has a sophisticated SMS/MMS/PSMS platform and it supports all mobile phones in North America.
KW: What artists might we know and love that are working with you today?
AZ: We recently launched the Dane Cook Global App and it has been a top 5 featured app by Apple. Other big users are Blink-182, Keith Urban and KISS… just to name a few. Zannel has also partnered with over 50 media companies since launch including Warner Bros., Playboy, Universal Pictures, Ubisoft, EMI, Road and Track Magazine and Versaly.
KW: Do users have to pay for Zannel?
AZ: It is a free, ad-supported service. Users only pay for premium content from artists via our paid iPhone Applications and premium SMS programs. For these products, Zannel offers pay-per-download, subscription-based services, as well as the upsell of artist music, tickets, and merchandise.
KW: So tell me about your user – what’s their preferred method of communiqué?
AZ: Zannel has millions of users and I would say that most access the service via their mobile phone vs. the web.
This last question is not for the faint of heart, but for all you true techies…
KW: Now give me the technical dish that will fly right over my very blonde and occasionally ditzy head!
BW: Zannel’s Instant Media Messagingâ„¢ platform is a cloud hybrid. The platform has core infrastructure that was initially deployed in 2006 (Linux/Apache/Java/Postgres) and uses Amazon EC2/S3 for media distribution. In addition to Zannel’s native iPhone applications, the platform supports both mobile and web browsers, and transcodes media to support over 800 mobile phone models. Zannel also has an open, REST based API for developers that is described here: http://groups.google.com/group/zannel-developers/web/overview.
Set up your Zannel account at www.zannel.com
