INSUBCONTINENT EXCLUSIVE:
The second season of the Penn Badgley romantic murder drama &You& launches on Netflix today — and along with it, a new project called
Cosmopolitan Watch Party.
You can hit play on the Watch Party website at the same time as you hit play on each episode, kicking offan
experience that runs alongside the show
Watch Party will show you content from Cosmo that tied to what you&re seeing on-screen, and it often drawn from interviews with the cast and
crew.
Cosmopolitan editor-in-chief Jessica Pels said her publication created Watch Party with Google News Lab, a team that collaborates
with newsrooms to create new experiences as part of the larger Google News Initiative
The idea was to respond to broader shifts in TV viewing, where &binge viewing is the thing, appointment viewing is not.&
She added, &As a
viewer, if you don&t catch it in that moment, you feel like you&re left out of that conversation
That why we&re bringing the conversation to you.&
Pels was hesitant about revealing too many details about Watch Party content, as so much
of it is tied to the twists and turns of the new season
But as an example, she said Watch Party could reveal that Badgley described &a certain song that he listens to when he trying to get into
the headspace of this murderer, in order to get into this scene.&
Not everyone will embrace the idea of constantly looking at their phone
while they watch Netflix, but Pels saidCosmopolitan traffic data suggests that plenty of viewers are doing it already
She also emphasized that it &all flat content& consisting of text and graphics, with no video or sound.
&You don&t want to be annoyingly
distracted from the show,& she said, describing it as &true companion content& that you can check when you want and ignore otherwise.
Simon
Rogers, data lead at Google News Lab, told me that Pels and her team were given access to exclusive Google Trends data for additional
insight into which characters and cast members viewers were responding
The News Lab also built a custom content management system for Watch Party that could be used for similar experiences in the future.
Not
that Pels has necessarily decided what the next Watch Party will be.
&I kind of want to leave ourselves open to the right partnership or the
right next opportunity for how best to execute round two,& she said.
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