pro manchester CEO

My top ten Twitter Apps including the @GMTweetmap here

Just posted my slideshare presentation on my top ten Twitter Apps. This includes Tweetdeck and the released today GMTweetmap. This is the list which ranks the most influential twitterers in the Manchester. Not without some flaws since I appear to be ranked at #160. The list is changing all the time thanks to a real time scrape from Nick the geek alias Nick McCloud from Descartes and a nice design from Richard Hudson at Vanilla Storm.

What that guy Nick cannot do with a database defies belief. Meeting of the e-team tomorrow as SME club takes shape. SME club, it will be huge. At the tip of the e-team vanguard is the ISM squad. More on this to follow. JKA

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The views expressed are my own and in no way reflect pro.manchester policy. In no way should the comments be considered as investment advice or guidelines or reflect political bias. UK Economics news and analysis : no politics, no dogma, no polemics, just facts. JKA is a visiting professor at MMU Business School, an economist and specialist in Corporate Strategy, educated at LSE, London Business School with a PhD from Manchester Metropolitan University.

Facebook and MySpace - News corp quits the one horse race

MySpace sold last week for just $35 million dollars, just four years ago, speculation was the site could be worth as much as $12 billion. This is a fair warning to Groupon and Facebook investors and a salutary lesson for Newscorp who paid $580 million in 2005 for one of the leading social media sites of the day. 

This is a great “Chart of the Day” from the US Business Insider demonstrating the life cycle of MySpace and the growth of Facebook. 

Specific Media, a digital media company, announced last week, it had acquired Myspace from News Corporation. Specific Media “is a digital media company driving viewership for content owners, engagement for brands and relevance for consumers. With capabilities spanning original programming, cross-channel distribution and addressable advertising, the company connects audiences, content and brands, adding meaning to each touch-point.” Sounds great but is $35 milllion such a good price. 

According to Ars Technica, MySpace enjoyed revenues of $1.1 billion in 2010 and managed to burn $431 million.  The total cost to the Murdoch empire is something like $1.3 billion over six years. 

It’s a sector for great vision and deep pockets. 

TechCrunch - Is MySpace worth $12 billion.

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The views expressed are my own and in no way reflect pro.manchester policy. In no way should the comments be considered as investment advice or guidelines or reflect political bias. UK Economics news and analysis : no politics, no dogma, no polemics, just facts. JKA is a visiting professor at MMU Business School, an economist and specialist in Corporate Strategy, educated at LSE, London Business School with a PhD from Manchester Metropolitan University.

pro.manchester SME club and the e-team - coming soon ....

Plans for the launch of SME club are proceeding at pace. This project will be huge for Manchester and we already have great support from the Greater Manchester Chamber of Commerce, Business Solutions and the Manchester family. As the largest advisory group in the North West, pro.manchester will offer free advice to businesses in Greater Manchester as part of the SME club project. It is a huge business development project for members and offers great value to the Manchester Business Community.

This week I met to discuss the project with Mike Blackburn Chairman of the Greater Manchester LEP, who was quick to realise the potential and offer full support. Greater Manchester Business Week will be the media partner on the project guaranteeing great exposure for members of SME club. A major sponsorship deal will be announced later this month and we are looking for a Digital Marketing manager to join the pro.manchester executive team.

Included in the SME club project are the e-team. So what is the e-team all about? E-Commerce, E-business and social media are essential for any business and the e-team is a group of specialist businesses in this space. It is important we engage with the best thinkers, who will challenge every step of the process and ensure we deliver a product fit for purpose to engage with the one hundred thousand businesses in  Greater Manchester.

E-commerce, e-business, web design, layout, SEO, PPC, Keyword strategies, e-mail programmes, remarketing, retargeting, link strategies, integrating social media, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, video, cloud, and even Google+, if you have something to offer the e-team and want to join the squad get in touch. If you have something to learn (and we all do) get on the SME club mailing list. It is going to be the biggest initiative ever undertaken in this space and it is all private sector led.

SME club and the e-team will be huge. The web site will be up soon. It has been designed by E-word as part of their contribution to the project. We always say, ask the private sector for money and you have a problem, show the private sector a way to make money and you have a solution.

After all, we are pro.manchester, who would not work with us.

pro.manchester SME club. It is going to be huge.

The views expressed are my own and in no way reflect pro.manchester policy. In no way should the comments be considered as investment advice or guidelines or reflect political bias. UK Economics news and analysis : no politics, no dogma, no polemics, just facts. JKA is a visiting professor at MMU Business School, an economist and specialist in Corporate Strategy, educated at LSE, London Business School with a PhD from Manchester Metropolitan University.

#GMTweetmap. How big is the Greater Manchester Twitter population? GM is the Twitter Capital outside of London.

It is estimated there are some five million users of Twitter in the UK but this figure has never been fully accredited as far as I can determine. It is also estimated the fall off rate, or lapsed rate, is quite high, as much as 40% in the first three months. Many register and fail to follow through with a good Twitter programme for tweets, friends and followers. So how big is the GM twitter population? 

To estimate the Manchester population, we can get some assistance from ranking sites such as http://twitaholic.com. Globally, we discover that Lady Gaga has over eleven million followers and is following 143,000 people. That must keep her social media team pretty occupied. More so Barack Obama having to track 700,000 people tweeting and being followed by 8.7 million people. That must be quite the challenge for the SM team, the FBI and the CIA. 

The http://twitaholic.com. search for Manchester produces a top one hundred list which is neither clean or up to date. It also includes media and sports stars which we would wish to eradicate from the pro.manchester #GMTweetmap. It provides some useful guidelines and names for inclusion but suggests only seven hundred followers are needed to get into the top one hundred.

A better site for purpose is http://followerwonk.com. A search for Manchester produces a return of over 60,000 twitter users (60,609). This compares well with Liverpool (28,978), Glasgow, (27,808), Leeds (23,457), Bristol (22,636) and Edinburgh (19,241). Manchester is clearly the Twitter capital outside of London. [London has 369,033 users].

If the UK gross Twitter population is five million, the Greater Manchester estimate would be around 200,000 maximum. Allowing for Home Counties bias, and a high wastage rate, the http://followerwonk.com figure is a great start point and represents a fantastic sample for analysis. 

Analysing the data, 80% of twitter users in Manchester have less than 150 followers. To be in the top 20% you would need an average of 685 followers and over eleven hundred to be in the top 10%. Yes it is true, I have undertaken that analysis. The results make a great long tail profile. (It's just pareto after all).

As for the @pro.manchester #GMTweetmap, the results can be downloaded Download @promanchester #GmTweetmap Individuals. We rank the top 250 key Social Media gurus in the city. There appears to be a near 60:40 male:female ratio. To get on the map follow @jkaonline. The automated web site will follow in due course. Check it out. Are you on the map?

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The views expressed are my own and in no way reflect pro.manchester policy. In no way should the comments be considered as investment advice or guidelines or reflect political bias. UK Economics news and analysis : no politics, no dogma, no polemics, just facts. JKA is a visiting professor at MMU Business School, an economist and specialist in Corporate Strategy, educated at LSE, London Business School with a PhD from Manchester Metropolitan University.

#GMTweetmap : @promanchester trails behind @PiccPigeon in latest shock update.

The Greater Manchester Tweetmap of organisations and institutions in the city has been updated over the week-end and the results are available as a down load spreadsheet. The web site to automate the process will be up on line soon.

Manchester airport remains in top slot with nineteen thousand followers but Mancunians obviously love a gossip and @McrGossip is in second place with over fourteen thousand followers. Visit Manchester, Manchester Biz and the Cornerhouse push into the top five.

Most prolific twitterers are Inside the M60, Manchester Chimp and the MEN business magazine closely followed by Manchester Airport and espionage Manchester. @promanchester appears in the top fifty, eight places behind Piccadilly pigeon, where is a good goshawk when you need one. So far we have eighty institutions or organisations listed in the project. To get on the Map just follow @jkaonline. 

@promanchester where social media matters. Sign up today and "subscribe" for e-mail notification of updates. DOWNLOAD the spreadsheet Download @promanchester GMTweetMap Organisations.

The views expressed are my own and in no way reflect pro.manchester policy. In no way should the comments be considered as investment advice or guidelines or reflect political bias. UK Economics news and analysis : no politics, no dogma, no polemics, just facts. JKA is a visiting professor at MMU Business School, an economist and specialist in Corporate Strategy, educated at LSE, London Business School with a PhD from Manchester Metropolitan University.

@promanchester Twitter Map and Rankings today's updates. Are you on the list?

A surge of new entries through the day has seen the inclusion of nearly thirty organisations and one hundred individual entries. @MartinSFP holds on to the top spot but @paulfabretti moves into second place ahead of Simon Wharton. 

@LeanneForshaw pushes Manoj Ranaweera to 9th place and Tim Bloxham just about stays within the top ten. Hot on his heels is Steve Juice needing just fourteen points to push into the favoured decile.

 

As for me, it has been a bad day plummeting to 84th in my own top one hundred. Needs more work obviously.The spreadsheet can be downloaded Download @promanchester Twitter Map Manchester. 

Don't forget, if you are not in the list or know someone who should be, let me know @jkaonline or e2 [email protected]. We want to complete the @promanchester TwitterMap of our city.

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The views expressed are my own and in no way reflect pro.manchester policy. In no way should the comments be considered as investment advice or guidelines or reflect political bias. UK Economics news and analysis : no politics, no dogma, no polemics, just facts. JKA is a visiting professor at MMU Business School, an economist and specialist in Corporate Strategy, educated at LSE, London Business School with a PhD from Manchester Metropolitan University.