The Weather Channel Companies (TWCC) has partnered Twitter to launch The Weather Channel Social, which allows consumers will be able to see real-time tweets about local weather displayed alongside forecasts online at weather.com, on TWCC's mobile offerings and apps, and on the television network.
The launch is one of the most ambitious attempts ever made to integrate Twitter into multiplatform programming by a cable programmer.
As part of the launch, TWCC worked with sponsor Citi and its digital agency Razorfish integrate messaging from the financial services company into the product.
The application uses Wiredset's Trendrr social curation and conversation analysis technology.
As part of The Weather Channel Social launch, TWCC has also created 220 custom local Twitter feeds that provide localized forecasts every three hours for cities with populations of 100,000 and above.
"Twitter gives voice and context to the topics people are most interested in, and everyone is interested in the weather," noted Chloe Sladden, Twitter's director of content and programming in a statement. "We're excited to make tweets an integral part of weather reports on television, online and mobile. By surfacing these conversations and providing human context around factual weather information, The Weather Channel Social brings weather alive."
Cameron Clayton, executive vice president of digital products of TWCC noted that the new product was a logical extension of their live TV programming, online, mobile and app strategies and that the partnership with Twitter would allow them to improve their weather coverage by providing local tweets about specific current weather conditions in a user's area.
Weather is already one of the most popular topics on Twitter, with U.S. users sending approximately 200 weather-related tweets per minute on an average day and significant weather events can generate even more interests, producing over two million tweets a day.
On weather.com, the Social module will display real-time, curated tweets matched for relevance to the weather in a particular location. Each city will also have a dedicated local Social page that displays a complete feed of real-time, weather-related tweets and an aggregation of other TWC social and user-generated content. Users would also be able to easily tweet their own observations.
On TWCC's iPhone app, real-time tweets will be featured on every local forecast page, along with a complete feed of real-time tweets and functionality so users can tweet comments and reactions.
For the television channel, Social will also be integrated into live programming to improve its coverage and to allow viewers to participate in the weather coverage.
