Everyone’s A Meteorologist
Now a site for your videos

With YouTube videos generating water cooler buzz, it only seems logical that the trend would rub off into weather coverage. That’s the idea behind a new user-video Website from the Weather Channel.

Without much publicity, the site (uservideo.weather.com) has seen steady growth in traffic since going into a live beta test late last fall. “We’re seeing great appetite,” says Weather Channel Director of Community Tim Pfau. “Even with just a few links, we’ve seen a significant amount of traffic on that site.”

Videos uploaded so far range from “you are there” weather reports from the inside of intense snowstorms to amateur weather forecasts from serious-seeming young meteorologists. Not to mention lots of home movies of pets enjoying various types of weather, from sun to sleet.

“It is a great reflection of the regional and local weather stories of the day,” says Pfau. “And it kind of proves that weather provides great context for people to create content.”

The site was developed by Magnify.net, a Web video solution provider, which created a suite of services that lets users upload videos while still allowing the Weather Channel to first screen video for content. Magnify.net CEO Steven Rosenbaum thinks of the weather videos as a type of “citizen journalism.”

“The nice thing is that it is completely authentic,” he says. “People are being allowed to explore weather in their own way.”

Magnify.net’s software allows companies small and large to easily put up and maintain their own YouTube-style video-hosting and -sharing site.

Pfau says the user-video site is just the beginning for the Weather Channel’s online community efforts. He hopes that, by the end of the year, the channel will have a Web location that will “tie together video, photos, blogging and social networking.”

—Garth Johnston