Is Twitter Changing Weather Alerts?
I am an avid writer and I often find fun things to write about on other websites. One of those websites I frequent is Twitter. Twitter is a pseudo social networking sight with mini blogging capabilities. If you think writing a text message was hard with 160 characters, Twitter restricts you to only 140 characters. Try summarize what you’re doing or thinking in one sentence… it’s not easy!
Anyway, so as I was on Twitter this afternoon/evening, I started noticing a common factor. Many of the people I was following were tweeting (posting a twitter message) about the weather. It’s not like they didn’t have a huge spectrum to comment about. The picture above is a snap shot of what was happening. Everything from tornado warnings in red, blizzard warnings in orange, and flood warnings in green.
That got me thinking. Are we at a time that we no longer are content with hearing about weather warnings from the chief meteorologist at your favorite TV station? We no longer pay attention to the alerts as they scroll across our screen? Do people still tune into their NOAA radios?
As many people know, I currently work at WeatherBug. We do have the desktop application that was very revolutionary at its inception. Now folks at work or in front of the computer could receive near real-time alerts as soon as they’re issued.
The chirping WeatherBug app is still as strong as ever, but I do see a competitor from Twitter. Check out a screen capture from my twitter feed.
Not only did many of these warnings come out in real-time, but they lack the generic tone of a NWS alert. If I lived in North Carolina (and weren’t a meteorologist) today, I would have sat in my basement with my wireless internet and continually pressed refresh on twitter for updates.
I think it will be very interesting to see how Twitter will effect the news-delivering in the upcoming few years. Before you forget, click on the button to the right and add us to your Twitter!
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When weatherbug first come out, wasn’t it considered spyware? Or was that just a fake alternative going aroudn infecting peoples PCs?
Other then that you mentioned that nobody really listens to the Chief Meteorologist on t.v. What I hear people saying about that is the news stations are too desperate to get the info out fast, thus causing them to lose accuracy (not sure how accurate that is). Other then that the t.v. is a dieing medium and everyone resorts to the internet or logging onto their twitter or other social networking through their phones while they are on the go.
Good writing though. I enjoyed the article.
Comment by Mike G — March 30, 2009 @ 1:37 pm
WeatherBug itself wasn’t spyware… Unfortunately they teamed with an ad company that was malicious spyware and they didn’t know it. You’d be surprised how many people ask that same question. People don’t forget.
That being said… I assure you that nothing like that is going on now. We can’t afford to damage our reputation.
Comment by Jacob Wycoff — March 30, 2009 @ 7:33 pm