Point Oh!

Putting the social shopping aspect aside, I have to admit to being a little skeptical about Cumul.us, the new social weather service.  Out of all the, for lack of a better term, classic Web 1.0 services out there, I feel that the weather sites are maybe the most fully baked.  There were a couple stumbling blocks by the likes of Weather Bug but they have, for the most part, been ironed out and most people who have been online for more than five years probably have a pretty good idea of where they go for weather information.

I also share Mashable’s skepticism that any average consumer has any great insight into the current conditions beyond what they read off another digital source.  Do I really want my weather information skewed by the 20-year-old thermometer sitting on Aunt Martha’s porch?

But then I looked at the site again and I’m wondering if it’s not really providing a more valuable service than weather metrics.  The site tells you what to wear!  Maybe you don’t feel like formulating the temperature versus the wind chill and the probability of rain.  Maybe you just want to know if you need to wear a scarf.  If that is the case, then Cumul.us may be onto something (as well as some nice affiliate revenue).

Fascinated by the concept of social weather?  BuzzFeed has a nice cross section of the recent coverage.  Oh, and if you’re not a nerd, the name”Cumulus” is a meteorology term for “fluffy cloud.”