For tripping Twitter’s live wire Kay Madati Global VP and head of content partnerships, Twitter
Kay Madati joined Twitter from BET last September to accelerate its live-video ambitions, and he proceeded to close 22 new partnerships in the fourth quarter of 2017. His goal: Find opportunities that complement rather than compete with media brands. “I’m not here to tell [networks] to stop producing content on TV and [only] put it on Twitter,” he says. Here’s how he’s helping partners go #Live. B U Z Z F E E D : Madati and his team have helped grow BuzzFeed’s AM to DM morning show on Twitter to an average of 1 million daily viewers by offering it on demand, rather than just live, and adding segments showcasing viewer tweets. A C A D E M Y AWA R D S : Madati devised three live-video experiences to air before, during, and after the Oscars. PeopleTV hosted the red carpet; IMDB held a live viewing party; and Vanity Fair live-streamed its after-party. F I FA W O R L D C U P 2 0 1 8 : Fox Sports will produce a 30minute daily recap for Twitter users in the US during the soccer championship. To prepare Footie Twitter, Madati made a deal with Major League Soccer to air a game of the week.
Illustration by Meijia Xu
FOR LAUNCHING A ZERO-G ECONOMY Twyman Clements CEO, Space Tango
Two boxes, each the size of a microwave oven, sit 250 miles above Earth on the International Space Station. They are miniature R&D labs, built and operated by Twyman Clements’s four-year-old company, Space Tango, that allow customers to test materials and manufacturing methods free of Earth’s gravity. The first TangoLab arrived on the ISS via SpaceX-9 in August 2016; a second went up on SpaceX-12 a year later. Each box can hold up to 21 independent “cube labs,” which run autonomously and stream data back to Space Tango engineers on Earth with a mere 700-millisecond delay, allowing them to observe results and adjust experimental settings quickly. Space Tango launched 30 tests for clients in 2017, its first year of commercial operation, and will send about 50 in 2018. Early customers include Budweiser, which is experimenting with growing barley in space, and companies prototyping space-based production of fiber-optic cable, semiconductors, retinal implants, and drug ingredients. “Research is a constant source of revenue,” says Clements, a mechanical engineer. “But we’ll really be successful when we can take raw materials up, add value, and bring a new product back.” JUNE 2018 FASTCOMPANY.CO.Z A 51