Ever think about starting an Internet weather start up?

30   Nov ,  2011 | 4
comments

There are a lot of meteorology grads out there trying to find a weather job.  Times are tough…and even some career professionals in meteorology hate their job or are struggling to find one (See what other options you have if you hate your meteorology job).   It might be a great time to venture out on your own.  Ever think about starting your own Internet weather start up?

By Internet weather start up…I don’t actually mean that you start your own weather consulting business on the Internet (although that is always an option if you find a niche).  What I am talking about is an Internet weather start up in the social media space.

Not sure if you knew, but weather is one of the most talked about conversations on Twitter.    And unfortunately there are not many weather entrepreneurs taking advantage of this opportunity.  Let me give you an example.   I was a start up entrepreneur for a very brief period of time.  My start up did not last because frankly I did not execute it properly.  You live and you learn.   Anyone can have a great idea, but execution is key.

Here’s my idea:  I wanted to show people what they should wear based on the weather.   My goal was to have a 3-D avatar show you what to wear based on the weather up to 5 days in advance in any city in the world (as a decision engine).  And then have people upload their own photos in real time of what they were wearing (as a social engine).  This way you could have real time photo sharing based on the weather.  People could rate each other’s outfits, buy their outfits…talk about where they are going, what they were doing, etc etc.  Bottom line, I was trying to build a social weather community on the web and mobile.

To my knowledge, there is still nobody doing this.  Maybe it’s not the right idea…or maybe someone needs to execute it better than I did.   What do you think of the idea?

Bottom line, there should be more innovation in the online weather space within social media. The Top 3 weather sites:  Wunderground, Weather.com, and Accuweather.com are all definitely heading in that direction.   They continue to add many social features on each of their sites…but there’s definitely more room for growth.

Before you dive right in on your next stellar idea…there are many factors of the social media start up world that you need to consider.  In my next series of posts on weather start ups, I’ll go into more details on what precisely I learned in my start up and what pitfalls you need to watch out for.  Stay tuned! (photo credit: Shakleereviewed)

Posted by: AJ · Categories: Weather Start up/Consulting

Posted by AJ on November 30, 2011

  • Brett5

    Interesting. I do like your idea but its definitely difficult to implement. If the weather changes every few hours…do you think people would upload their photos enough to show that this is what you should wear? I think this part of weather space is definitely not something I’ve heard much of but interesting that you pointed it out. Thanks AJ.

  • Anonymous

    Absolutely Brett. Thanks for your comment! I think what I needed to do was start a lot of simpler. Build a prototype…get feedback…instead of trying to do so much all at once. I also feel that if you uploaded photos in the “afternoon” or “evening”…people would get a general sense of what people would be wearing.

  • Andrew Joros

    check out @powdiction and powdiction.com!

  • Chris Jumper

    AJ, this is definitely an interesting idea and something that I have thought about doing for awhile now but never really knew where to go with it or how to pursue. I have been thinking about starting my own weather forecasting company on the internet. In a nutshell, I would build a website and posts weather forecasts, trying to build a fan base. I could use Facebook and maybe Twitter to advertise my site to get people to follow my weather forecasts. It may take awhile, but once I had a good following of fans, I could go out and get some sponsors to pay me to place ads on my website. I would start off small, maybe just locally like a few counties around where I live here in western NC, and hopefully grow eventually to cover other areas such as the upstate of SC and GA. I was thinking I could possibly go after sponsors such as ski resorts who rely heavily on weather.

    Your right, weather is such a huge topic on Twitter and Facebook and not to mention that 1/3 of the United States’ GDP is weather sensitive, there has to be ways to make money off of this! I would appreciate your thoughts and ideas on this. Does this seem realistic or should I look at it from a different perspective? I know it would take some time before I was making any money but the way this economy is, I am not having any luck finding a meteorology job any other way. Thanks for your input and keep up the good work!