Rise Dives Into Shark Week Live!

We won’t lie. There are Shark Week fanatics at Rise who would sail to Africa and personally cut chum just to see a jumping shark fly free (@DawnBorglund, we’re looking at you!). Combine that with our passion for digital technology and imagine the overwhelming wow factor we felt upon downloading Shark Week Live, The Discovery Channel’s new app that further connected users to their televised event through digital media. If we were octopi, we’d have inked ourselves.

Available for your computer, iPhone and iPad, the app synchronized to their Shark Week programming schedule by time zone so that the digital content they delivered matched the televised content as it aired. Very cool.

Here are some of our favorite features:

• Chat. This allowed users to comment on what they were seeing as they watched (envision a huge shark sneak-attacking a seal and 20 users posting variants of “OH, SNAP!” together). It helped fans connect and enhanced their entertainment experience.
• Photo Sharing. You could link to Facebook and share your shark-related images with other fans who can then rate your photos with “fins.” Our five-fin favorite? Pics with silly shark hats! During some of the breaks on the show, the app would display some of their favorite pictures.
• Trivia. The Shark Week Live Trivia Game was a rad quiz system where related questions popped up according to the content of the show. Every question you answered correctly through the app earned you points to compete with other viewers digitally, ranking winners by show and then for the entire week.
• Surveys. We definitely have opinions and love to share them, so we were excited to be invited to participate with other user-viewers to share opinions and learn what others think about various sharky topics. The surveys were often playful and with questions along the lines of, “who do you think is going to be the next person attacked?” it was always interesting.
• Information Immersion. Discovery’s app developers really got creative in how they presented more information to enrich their audience’s viewing experience. There are corresponding packets of information that match the program, like when that huge shark we were talking about earlier that sneak-attacked that seal, an image of a seal pops up describing the animal’s weaknesses and points of vulnerability. Jawesome!!

Transmedia development is the all the rage as different technologies become integrated. Shark Week Live is a major leap forward in connecting television and digital media, pumping new and varied content straight to users through their digital devices, encouraging interaction and allowing viewers to engage in Shark Week on an entirely new level. We give it five fins way up!