Twitter users actually do want to engage with video content. That’s according to Kay Madati, Vice President and Global Head of Partnerships at the social network, who says the company is doubling down on the strategy.
“At the core of it, people actually do come to the platform and consume content and stick around,” Madati told Cheddar in an interview at SXSW.
Last week, Twitter announced an exclusive partnership with Major League Soccer, including live-streaming some matches on the platform. And just last quarter, it streamed over 1,100 live events.
“We’ll probably actually scale that number even further in Q1 of this year,” said Madati.
Twitter’s commitment to video extends to its media partnerships. Madati, who was BET’s Chief Digital Officer before assuming this role at Twitter, told Cheddar he’s seen how partnerships work for the social network from the other side of the equation and brings that experience to his new role.
Instead of disrupting the consumer’s relationship with the media organization, Twitter “is here to actually...show you that we have additive audiences on our platform who very well may not be watching you on other platforms.”
“Twitter fundamentally seeks to be an extension of our partners’ reach,” said Madati. “We care just as much about our partners’ business models...as we do [about] what that content then means on our platform.”
Rival Facebook took a major gamble on live videos a couple years ago, paying publishers to create quality content on the platform. Then last year, it started scaling back funding for those publishers and shifted its strategy.
Now, Twitter is hoping that by stepping into the void, it can get those publishers to create original content on its own platform and lure in more users.
For the full interview, [click here](https://cheddar.com/videos/twitter-inks-3-year-streaming-deal-with-mls).
The State Department had been in talks with Elon Musk’s Tesla company to buy armored electric vehicles, but the plans have been put on hold by the Trump administration after reports emerged about a potential $400 million purchase. A State Department spokesperson said the electric car company owned by Musk was the only one that expressed interest back in May 2024. The deal with Tesla was only in its planning phases but it was forecast to be the largest contract of the year. It shows how some of his wealth has come and was still expected to come from taxpayers.
At 100 years old, the Goodyear Blimp is an ageless star in the sky. The 246-foot-long airship will be in the background of the Daytona 500 — flying roughly 1,500 feet above Daytona International Speedway, actually — to celebrate its greatest anniversary tour. Even though remote camera technologies are improving regularly and changing the landscape of aerial footage, the blimp continues to carve out a niche. At Daytona, with the usual 40-car field racing around a 2½-mile superspeedway, views from the blimp aptly provide the scope of the event.
You'll just have to wait for interest rates (and prices) to go down. Plus, this deal's a steel, the big carmaker wedding is off, and bribery is back, baby!
It’s a chicken-and-egg problem: Restaurants are struggling with record-high U.S. egg prices, but their omelets, scrambles and huevos rancheros may be part of the problem. Breakfast is booming at U.S. eateries. First Watch, a restaurant chain that serves breakfast, brunch and lunch, nearly quadrupled its locations over the past decade to 570. Fast-food chains like Starbucks and Wendy's added more egg-filled breakfast items. In normal times, egg producers could meet the demand. But a bird flu outbreak that has forced them to slaughter their flocks is making supplies scarcer and pushing up prices. Some restaurants like Waffle House have added a surcharge to offset their costs.
William Falcon, CEO and Founder of Lightning AI, discusses the ongoing feud between Elon Musk and Sam Altman, and how everyday people can use AI in their lives.
U.S. tariffs on steel and aluminum “will not go unanswered,” European Union chief Ursula von der Leyen vowed on Tuesday, adding that they will trigger toug
The Trump administration has ordered the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau to stop nearly all its work, effectively shutting down the agency that was created to protect consumers after the 2008 financial crisis and subprime mortgage-lending scandal. Russell Vought is the newly installed director of the Office of Management and Budget. Vought directed the CFPB in a Saturday night email to stop work on proposed rules, to suspend the effective dates on any rules that were finalized but not yet effective, and to stop investigative work and not begin any new investigations. The agency has been a target of conservatives since President Barack Obama created it following the 2007-2008 financial crisis.
