AppCheck: The Weather Channel

App Makes Weather More Visual, Social

The Weather Channel is pushing the envelope with its new app, which uses geolocation to deliver up-to-date forecasts to users wherever they happen to be. The app also holds lessons for local stations looking to expand their weather franchises.
NetNewsCheck,

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Editor's note: AppCheck is a new feature that spotlights news, weather, sports and entertainment applications for mobile and tablet devices with a local hook or functionality, examining their features, audience and business model.

Weather apps are becoming as ubiquitous as sunny days in Los Angeles, but with the iPad 2, juggernaut The Weather Channel saw a whole new playground open up. It holds lessons for local TV companies, which have highly visible, profitable weather franchises.

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“We wanted to showcase the features of what the iPad could do,” said Scott Jensen, VP of digital products and applications at the network. “How do you get beyond just the data and make it so that weather is a truly visual experience?”

The answer to that question greets the user on the app’s opening screen, which features a weather-triggered, dynamic background image (picture gently swaying grass in a verdant field on a nice day). It follows from the first tap into a multilayered forecast screen stretching across 10 days and deepening down to 15-minute increments on the current day. Another tab opens up a spinning globe that zooms down with a touch into favorite locations (users can plot up to 10), offering alternate views in eight different layers (radar, clouds and UV index among them).

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The new app marks a strategy turn for The Weather Channel, Jensen said, in which tablet apps are being segmented away from smartphones. iPad apps will set the visual and upgrade benchmark for other devices going forward. Jensen said that versions for Windows desktop, an Android tablet and various smartphones will follow the iPad app’s release in the coming months.

The app, which was developed internally beginning in the first quarter of this year and released in October, also features ample news and video feeds augmented by weather images customized by the user’s location. Drawing on weather data from around the globe, Jensen said it can also function anywhere with a strong enough connection.

Another principal innovation is the app’s social component, which is powered by a new partnership with Twitter. “We were starting to see people communicate particularly on Twitter about the weather,” Jensen said, “so we wanted to have a partnership where The Weather Channel and Twitter could together aggregate all of those tweets that were weather-related tied to a specific geolocation.”

Users who want to join the Twitter discussion or upload iWitness photos from their iPads can now do so directly through the app’s interface.

The app’s revenue model draws on dynamic display ads, and it launched with an exclusive sponsor in Westin Hotels and Resorts. “In addition to the consumer aspect of this, we also wanted to create a subtle but effective way for the advertisers and marketers to use this product,” Jensen said, indicating that tablet advertising is targeted to become a significant source of the network’s future revenue.

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Vital stats:

Vendor: The Weather Channel

Cost to consumers: Free

Compatible devices: iPad

Revenue source: Dynamic display ads

White label version available: No

Number of downloads: Upwards of 5 million (since original iPad 1 app launch)

Key characteristics: A richly-visual 10-day forecast screen with expandable hourly forecasts; three-dimensional globe with spinning and zooming functionalities offering multiple map viewing layers of favorited geolocations; geotargeted Twitter feeds on local weather; news and video segments

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