Product managers improved the 2016 Olympic Games in Rio over the Olympics of just a few years ago — and, actually, over every Olympics in memory.

We don’t mean that product managers made changes to the games themselves. Rio 2016 had the familiar mix of standby Olympic events (the parallel bars, the 100-meter butterfly) and the odd (Race walking? Trampoline Gymnastics? Seriously?).

The 2016 Summer Olympics weren’t different from previous Olympic events because of who was competing, how the events were scheduled, or which country won the most medals. What made this time unique were the new ways that the millions of us watching around the world were able to enjoy and interact with the Olympics.

And for that, we can thank new technologies and the product managers who brought them to us.

Here are 4 technologies that made the 2016 Summer Olympics more personal, more accessible, more interactive and more fun than ever.

1. Live Streaming, Anywhere

If you were around for the 1988 Olympics, or the 1992 Olympics or the ones in 1996, you probably cheered on your favorite athletes very differently from the way you just did in 2016.

Back then your ability to watch the Olympics was limited to the hours that the TV networks aired them. Depending on your time zone, that often meant waiting until late at night to catch your favorite events. And every event was sandwiched, of course, between commercials — which you couldn’t skip because the product managers who would ultimately bring us the DVR were probably still in school.

Fast forward to 2016 and NBC is live-streaming every event. More than 4,500 hours of live Olympics content has been made available on NBCOlympics.com, as well as through other streaming services like Apple TV, Amazon Fire and Roku.

Thanks to the forward-thinking product managers, developers, marketing teams and executives at these and similar companies, millions of us experienced a more personal, more customized Olympics than we ever had. We got to watch the games on our terms, anywhere, anytime.

2. Twitter

Few technological tools have had such a profound impact on recent world events as Twitter.

But before we discuss exactly how Twitter made Rio 2016 unique in the history of the Olympic Games, let’s return to the Olympics of the last couple of decades. Most if not all of the content surrounding those games was slickly produced, safely packaged and, often, quite boring.

The network with the rights to the games would produce short documentaries on the front-runner athletes to generate emotional interest in the events. (How else are you going to convince people to stay up until midnight to watch race walking?) The athletes themselves gave few interviews and, when they did speak with reporters, they were careful and measured in their answers.

Boring.

But throughout the 2016 games, millions of followers were treated to fun, candid updates from Michael Phelps on his final Olympic journey. We got to hear directly from Simone Biles in real-time as she experienced her inspiring rise to worldwide superstardom.

These athletes were talking directly to us. And we could even send them direct messages back.

Thank you, Twitter, for making millions of fans feel like they were a part of the games.

3. Snapchat

And speaking of immersing us in the games, Snapchat. In 2016, Snapchat let us watch our favorite events from the perspective of the people in Rio, including the athletes themselves.

Through Snapchat stories, we saw the Olympics first-hand, collectively narrated by thousands of Snapchat users in the stands, on the field, and in the streets of Rio. And if you were lucky enough to be in Rio yourself, you too could snap your surroundings and potentially be featured for the world to see.

Snapchat stories are nothing like watching the Olympics on network TV — and they will certainly never replace the experience of watching your favorite event in high definition, shot by professionals.

But the fact that Snapchat stories are amateur is a key differentiator for them. In 2016, Snapchat gave us a unique window into spaces that network cameras have never been able to go.

4. Facebook

And of course, there’s Facebook.

Before social media, our ability to gossip about the athletes and relive the exciting details of the previous night’s events was limited. We were usually restricted to talking about the games at the water cooler the next day at work.

But in the Facebook era, we can join rich conversations with family, friends and colleagues anytime, anywhere. We can watch exciting video clips of recent events, comment on them, argue with the idiot who disagrees with our comment, and hear what the games mean to the people we care about.

Thanks to Facebook and similar social media platforms, the 2016 Olympics, like so many events that we all experience at the same time but have rarely been able to talk about as extensively as we’ve wanted to… now truly feel like shared moments.

As we enter the closing-ceremony stage of this post, we’d like to thank you, technology product managers everywhere, for making not only the Olympics but the rest of our lives more fun. You all deserve the gold!

How about you? Did you experience the 2016 games differently thanks to technology? Please share your stories on how you followed the 2016 Olympics by leaving a comment.