The Weather Channel Teams With Twitter to Launch The Weather Channel Social

ATLANTA and SAN FRANCISCO, Aug. 11, 2011 /PRNewswire/ -- The Weather Channel Companies (TWCC) and Twitter today announced the launch of The Weather Channel Social, an integration of local, weather-related Tweets across TWCC's television, Web and mobile platforms. Now consumers will be able to see real-time Tweets about local weather displayed alongside forecasts on weather.com, through The Weather Channel on mobile, and on television. This unique integration was made possible by 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 for cities with populations of 100,000 and above. These handles provide consumers localized forecasts every three hours. Consumers can access feeds for their location by clicking the "Follow the Forecast" link from local forecast pages on weather.com or can enter their city/ state or ZIP code from www.weather.com/social.

Weather is already one of the most popular topics on Twitter:

• On an average day, U.S. users send approximately 200 weather-related Tweets per minute
• On an active weather day, U.S. users send between 300 to 500 weather-related Tweets per minute
• Significant weather events can generate more than two million Tweets per day

"Twitter gives voice and context to the topics people are most interested in, and everyone is interested in the weather," said Chloe Sladden, Twitter's director of content and programming. "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."

The Weather Channel worked with sponsor Citi and its digital agency Razorfish to create an innovative social integration to encourage consumer conversation about local and national weather and relevant events. Citi will feature messaging in high-profile, high-impact placements across TWC properties – on television, online, on mobile and throughout TWC Social pages. TWC network will include on-air mentions and "Tweets of the day" around Social content.

The Weather Channel Social will be an integrated part of all TWCC platforms – on weather.com the Social module appears directly below the current weather conditions on every local forecast page. This module will display several real-time, curated Tweets matched for relevance to weather in that particular location. In addition, each city has a dedicated local Social page which displays a complete feed of real-time, weather-related Tweets, an aggregation of other TWC social and user-generated content, and the ability to Tweet their weather comments directly into the conversation.

"Weather is the ultimate social content; it's guaranteed to spark conversation among family, friends and complete strangers," said Cameron Clayton, executive vice president of digital products of TWCC. "Adding Social to all of our platforms makes our storytelling more complete, enabling us to partner our expertise and forecasting with real-time local input about the weather from our consumers in a way that is relevant and personal."  

On TWCC's iPhone app, real-time Tweets will be featured on every local forecast page.  A local Social page with a complete feed of real-time Tweets and the ability to directly participate in the conversation will also be available.

Social will also be integrated into the content on The Weather Channel network during dedicated segments during live programming. On air this will enable TWCC to bring users into the story by showing real-time messages before, during and after weather events as well as following and reporting on the leading weather trends from Twitter. Throughout TWCC coverage, it will highlight how people enjoy a perfect – or less than ideal – weather day and will celebrate the network's most influential viewers.  During severe weather, Social will be a powerful tool that will enable TWCC to tell a complete story of how a weather event is making its impact locally.

The Weather Channel Social analyzes social conversations powered by technology from Wiredset, a real-time digital marketing agency, using a proprietary platform that creates sophisticated classification algorithms to identify and analyze social conversations in real time.

TWCC has been a leader in social media with The Weather Channel Social as its latest development. Its personalities such as @JimCantore, and news feeds such as @WeatherChannel continue to be some of the most popular in the social media space. The Weather Channel Social content is available now across all of TWCC's platforms.  Join the weather conversation at www.weather.com/social. For photos and video, visit http://pitch.pe/164187.

SOURCE The Weather Channel

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