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David Marcus Of Zong

May 29, 2008 – 5:50 pm

David Marcus runs Zong. He understands mobile having made deals with carriers all over the world. You have to know your shit, and be a pretty cool customer to pull that off. This is a short version of a longer interview I did with him.

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David Marcus
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Posted in 1938 Media, Interview, Zong


If you liked this video you can actually pay for it if you want.

  1. 42 Responses to “David Marcus Of Zong”

  2. Gr8, now the Q is, when it will be available in Czech Republic (O2, Vodafone, T-Mobile)?

    BC you know, I really do not want to miss any feldmans stuff. Until then, Zong sucks

    By Pavel Neuman on May 29, 2008

  3. hmm… Loren’s nodding reminds me of someone… who would that be? :)

    By silvrstar on May 29, 2008

  4. great quick informative interview. not unlike others who seem to like to publish dvd length video interviews. hope to see more mr. feldman.

    By aw on May 29, 2008

  5. <ShellPuppet>FASCINATING!</ShellPuppet>

    By Tim on May 29, 2008

  6. Again, I can’t use his service. Not only do I not SMS from my phone (they are purposely shut off), since the phone has a smashed screen, its not capable of it. It is unlikely I will opt to turn SMS on with my next phone either. I just don’t see the point of txt-ing.

    By Jennifer on May 29, 2008

  7. David has got no upper lip? Is it normal? :-)

    By Bil on May 29, 2008

  8. Ok group response here:

    Pavel: we’re working on covering CZ, we should be done by the end of the year. We’re also working on covering Russia, Hungary and most of Central and Eastern Europe. Stay tuned.

    Jennifer: don’t mean to be insulting or anything, but there are over 125 billion text messages sent each year. Most people in developing countries use SMS, even to transfer cash to one another (see G-Cash in the Philippines), there are way more cell phone users texting than credit cards in circulation. GET A NEW PHONE! With carrier subsidies, it should even be free! How can you actually be web/tech savvy with a cell that has a smashed screen??

    Bil: my upper lip has dissolved over time after talking carriers all around the world to work with us ;-) - and hey, post your pic somewhere!

    By David Marcus on May 29, 2008

  9. CORRECTION: It’s actually 2 TRILLION SMS/TEXT MESSAGES that will be sent in 2008.

    By David Marcus on May 29, 2008

  10. I told you he’s good. Jennifer get with the program would ya.

    By Loren Feldman on May 29, 2008

  11. David, how about supporting italian numbers? Any plans?

    By Davide Tarasconi on May 30, 2008

  12. Hi Marcus,

    Only thing which has not changed since the first time I contacted your echovox team (in 2002 if I am right) is the indecent margin taken by the carriers (around 40/50%).

    It is a *shame* they take so much for transfering such a small amount of data.

    Zong will be a viable solution, the day these carriers will lower their margin to an acceptable number.

    By FredTheSwiss on May 30, 2008

  13. Had some problems using Zong here on 1938 when I first tried it. Messaged David directly and he solved my issues without hesitation. Great response from an exciting company.

    By Robert Chute on May 30, 2008

  14. Davide: Italian carriers’ outpayments are really ridiculously low. They basically keep 60-65% of what they get from the end users and until that changes we won’t connect as we find it unfair to our customers.

    FredTheSwiss: Agreed, the carriers take a sizable chunk of the revenues. But you’re missing the point here. Credit card conversion is 0.5%, mobile payment can go as high as 5-7%, so it’s still ideal for digital goods and services. Finally over and beyond a 10x improvement on the conversion, once a user has paid with his cell, you can trigger additional transactions seamlessly (dating follow-up chats, content downloads, premium alerting, and more…).

    By David Marcus on May 30, 2008

  15. Don’t need to post a pic you know me but geez that upper lip is really missing :-)

    By Bil on May 30, 2008

  16. No upper lip, no mobile monetization, sorry David.

    By Bil on May 30, 2008

  17. David, thanks for the reply. I thought it was something like that. It’s a pity, they’re cutting out a lot of services like yours.

    By Davide Tarasconi on May 30, 2008

  18. @david Marcus: But this means that if I sells 10x more, I will still earn the same (NET)…. Let’s hope that I can hide that to my accountant….

    David, I still love your idea. And I am really impressed by the work you have done. I am sure you can work on the “Gross margin” issue. :)

    During the gold rush. There were 1000s of poor guys working hard to find some gold that never came. The only one who were really making a lot of money where the guys selling the equipments.
    Guess who is playing which role in our today’s story? ;)

    By FredTheSwiss on May 30, 2008

  19. @FredTheSwiss Ok… Let’s do some maths here:

    ** 100,000 transactions @ $2 with Paypal = $164,200 net (2.9% + 30¢ to Paypal or 17.9% of the end-user revenue)

    ** 100,000 transactions @ $2 with Zong = $104,000 net

    So how can you say that if you do 10x more transactions, or 1,000,000 transactions, netting you $1,040,000 instead of $164,200, you will earn the same??

    Got to get your maths right! ;-)

    By David Marcus on May 30, 2008

  20. Their WP plugin sucks. Traded 14+ emails with Adrien trying to get the damn thing to work, never did.

    By Kyle Dylan Conner on May 30, 2008

  21. Agree with Kyle, plugin is a mess so does Zong

    By Daned on May 31, 2008

  22. So is Zong, sorry… full of bugs

    By Daned on May 31, 2008

  23. “once a user has paid with his cell, you can trigger additional transactions seamlessly (dating follow-up chats, content downloads, premium alerting, and more…”

    @David Marcus - does this mean you can do recurring billing?

    Would there be a simple way to automatically track & handle affiliate payments with zong?

    This is exciting!

    By Jecklin on May 31, 2008

  24. @kyle @daned: The WP plugin was released this week so it might still contain a few bugs and the team is working hard on this as we speak. Nevertheless, I’d love to get the specifics on your problem(s). Kyle, you say you’re already in touch with someone. I’ll reach out to the team to find out more. Daned please let me know what’s going on directly at david(at)zong(dot)com.

    Please also note that we’re putting all our efforts on http://developer.zong.com - we found that it was very hard to meet the requirements of all our customers with packaged apps, as you find them on http://zong.com so we decided to focus exclusively on the new API and the dev network and make all apps we develop available in Open Source to everyone. We will continue support existing non-ZDN “legacy” customers but will not accept creation of new services on the hosted version of Zong shortly. More coming on this next week.

    @Daned Although I accept that the WP may have some issues as it’s brand new. I can’t let you say Zong is a mess. Its underlying infrastructure carries over 60 million transaction a month and is used for live voting for the European version of American Idol that generates peaks of traffic of over 2,300 transactions a second. Few players out there have these types of capabilities.

    @Jecklin yes you can do recurring billing, monthly subscriptions and automatically triggered billing (not in all the countries for the latter). For the tracking, the API provides stats, as well as the console. You can find more details at http://developer.zong.com - I strongly encourage you to go through the Wiki and API doc, you will have a better understanding of Zong’s capabilities.

    By David Marcus on May 31, 2008

  25. Just found the answer to one of my questions: yes, you do recurring billing

    By Jecklin on May 31, 2008

  26. Your voting for the european american-idol version doesn’t go trough Zong… it goes directly trough echovox’s infrastructure and you know it.

    Millions transactions a month on Zong, come on :-)

    By Daned on May 31, 2008

  27. Daned, sorry but you’re wrong. Zong’s underlying infrastructure is indeed what we’ve been building for over 7 years at Echovox, but all new large-scale applications we develop for leading media groups is based on Zong’s new API, which is the one you find in the developer section of Zong.

    By David Marcus on May 31, 2008

  28. Yeah right :-)

    By Daned on May 31, 2008

  29. Thanks, I’ll check out the docs. Our comments must have posted at the same time.

    By Jecklin on May 31, 2008

  30. @David The only thing the plugin does for me is state that the blog post is temporally (should be temporarily) unavailable. It doesn’t do anything else. I don’t know why it was released to the public.

    By Kyle Dylan Conner on Jun 1, 2008

  31. Your plugin doesn’t work and makes my blog unavailable??? Why do you come out with such unstable products? Is this a joke Lauren? Come on it’s not April 1st.

    By David A. Boned on Jun 1, 2008

  32. Again I must say I lost several hours try to make the damn thing work… I’m really pissed here. Internet is all about one-shot products not about tweak-for-days shits. removeing your plugin right now.

    DAve

    By David A. Boned on Jun 1, 2008

  33. @David A. Boned The whole thing is bullshit. I don’t know why it was even released. You would think they would check to see if it even worked first.

    By Kyle Dylan Conner on Jun 1, 2008

  34. It worked perfect for me out of the box.

    By Loren Feldman on Jun 1, 2008

  35. @Loren That’s cause they love you.

    By Kyle Dylan Conner on Jun 1, 2008

  36. No seriously. I used the same plugin. Email David and Im sure he’ll help you out.

    By Loren Feldman on Jun 1, 2008

  37. Kyle and others experiencing problems with the plugin. Please re-read the readme.txt file delivered with the plugin and make 100% sure you meet the requirements as outlined at the bottom of the readme file. Secondly we have setup a forum here http://developer.zong.com/forum/viewforum.php?f=7 if you still experience problems after having addressed the Pre requisites.

    By Serge on Jun 2, 2008

  38. @David: Actually I do not charge $2 which is why the figures do not match.
    If you do not nanocharge, 40/50% is way too much. For very small figures per transaction, zong is great.

    By FredTheSwiss on Jun 2, 2008

  39. We have uploaded a new version (0.1.8) of the plugin to the WordPress Plugin Directory. It will take an hour or two before it apears as the latest version but you can download it here. http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/content-pay-by-zong/download/ under “Other Versions”

    This version tries to detect missing pre requisites and inform you of errors.

    Please do read the readme.txt and upgrade.txt files

    By Serge on Jun 3, 2008

  40. Lol… 0.1.8???? What are we mate?? Alpha testers?? You must be kidding here. :-)

    By David A Drilled on Jun 3, 2008

  41. You got it mate ;-) But nobody is forcing you to install it.

    By Serge on Jun 4, 2008

  42. I want the incoming and outgoing status of my Mobile No. 92 03149511528

    By Muhammad Saeed on Jun 19, 2008

  43. I want the incoming and outgoing status of my Mobile No. 92 03149511528 from 1st May 2008 to 19 June 2008

    By Muhammad Saeed on Jun 19, 2008

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