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The Weather Channel continues climate crowdsourcing craze

The Weather Channel is partnering with a crowdsourced content application to create a hub for real-time weather content across the United States. 

The hub will be a product of the media outlet?s partnership with independent app develop Snapwise Inc., and specifically its uCiC app which allows users to see any place in the world at the present moment through requests from other app users in that location using videos, photos and instant messaging. Leveraging the platform for weather-based content marks a continuation of a peculiar, yet growing, fad in the weather sector.

Weather content
The pilot will be hosted by The Weather Channel and its affiliated services, many of which have mobile-optimized components. The collaboration with uCiC will involve The Weather Channel prompting users to submit videos of how they are affected by the weather, and specifically severe weather. 

The partnership continues The Weather Channel's dedication to broadcasting the social applications of severe weather

The development crowdsources a brand of content historically native to traditional media: news teams weathering the brunt of a storm to record its effects live. Unfortunately, a press release did not address how The Weather Channel and uCiC will mitigate against any chance of danger in encouraging homegrown severe weather content.

The partnership, like so many other socially-generated associations, will give The Weather Channel a deep repository of content, essentially for free. 

The uCiC app was the winner of the 2015 CES Mobile Apps Showdown, and prompts interactions with a question-and-answer format. The platform will allow The Weather Channel to instantly access its user base and collect real-time videos of weather around the country, which will then be broadcast through The Weather Channel?s outlets.

Content of all persuasions can be viewed through uCiC

Crowdsourced weather
The crowdsourcing of weather content, and especially weather content, is becoming an unexpectedly popular commodity within certain tech circles. Its popularity may be due to a unique marriage of addictive long-form mobile content, palatable to even the shortest of attention spans, and built-in avenues for empathy for individuals in dire situations that many can relate to. 

In keeping with this trend, The Weather Company? IBM?s weather data and forecasting subsidiary? is collaborating with GlaxoSmithKline's Theraflu to bring a cold and flu tracker into the palms of consumers? hands (see story). 

And as Hurricane Matthew bore down on southern United States and Haiti was left in ruins, mobile technologies offered assistance with brands leveraging digital platforms to help out those in need (see story).