It’s going to be 96 degrees today in New York City, as you must know by now (if not because you checked the weather, then because everyone on Twitter has been grousing about it). However, not every day’s weather comes with a warning sign.
“I have AC in my house so it could be 100 degrees outside and I have no idea,” Seth Porges, a journalist turned Airbnb host turned app maker, told Betabeat. That’s why his fashion app, Cloth, just introduced a feature that suggests an outfit based on the weather. “You just press a button and boom, see what the weather is outside.”
Considering the many easy ways to find out the weather, it’s tough to predict what demand will be for the uber-convenience of having an app to tell you the weather and what to wear for it at the same time.
But Cloth, which prompts users to take photos of their favorite outfits and tag them with notes and categories, already received accolades from Mashable, The Next Web and the women’s site The Gloss before the relaunch, and Mr. Porges bets the new function will be a hit. “Fashion and weather are fields with a huge overlap,” Mr. Porges said. “There’s surprisingly little technology to bridge those two worlds.”
The latest version of the iPhone app has two major new features: the aforementioned outfit recommendation trick, built thanks to a partnership with Wunderground; and Instagram-esque filters supplied by Aviary. The basic Cloth app is free, with a $.99 in-app upgrade for the weather functionality.
“It’s kind of nice to see our baby mature from this little app into something that other companies work with and want to partner with us on,” Mr. Porges said. “That’s always cool and gratifying for something that starts as just a little bedroom operation.”
Mr. Porges bootstrapped his app by renting out his Williamsburg apartment on Airbnb, as he wrote in a post for The Next Web.
Has Mr. Porges felt any of the rumored dropoff in revenue for the amateur bed and breakfasts as more hosts join Airbnb? No, he said. “It’s steadily booked.”
