Speaking to How-Do about the fresh online endeavour Sowerby was enthusiastic, yet admirably candid, about the portal, describing it as “a lovely thing that will get even lovelier.”

CityLife.co.uk launched to the tuned-in online community just over a week ago.

It was an arrival which, after nine months in gestation, ostensibly seems to have come a little early for Sowerby, who says that things were “a little mad” and “pretty rushed” as the team were forced to show off their baby ahead of the imminent ‘CityLife.co.uk Manchester Food And Drink Festival’.

“As the headline sponsor we really had to get the site out before the festival itself,” exclaimed Sowerby, understandably enough.

Despite the fact that he seems to imply that the site is still a work in progress it looks, to the average How-Do’er, remarkably accomplished and finished.

As one reader emailed in to us over the weekend to opine: “they’ve created the best entertainment site in Manchester.”

MEN: time travellers

“The City Life brand meant a lot of things to a lot of people,” Sowerby said in reference to the long-running standalone offline title that was shelved back in 2005.

“So in some ways you could say this is a case of ‘back to the future’.

“It will be filling a certain gap, providing a similar service, but on a far greater and more comprehensive scale, freed of the space restrictions of appearing in a print format.

As such Sowerby referred to the music-dining-arts-clubbing-entertainment-listings site as “a beast”, and one that would evolve to provide the aforementioned “complete social map” of both the city and the individual users of the site.

“Over the next few months logged-in users will be offered recommendations of gigs and events that fit their profiles and interests,” he revealed, noting: “It’ll be a bit like Amazon for example, where suggestions are tailored for the individual.”

Also waiting in the wings are yet to launch features such as numerous Manchester blogs.

Sowerby believes these will help add the “attitude and tone” that the site still needs:

The editor describes the site as “a major project” for the MEN group and one that it’ll use all of its multi-media prowess – expect to see video content from Channel M for example – to breathe life into and support wholeheartedly.

In the wake of a failure by any one concern to seize on the gap left by the demise of CityLife’s print edition (what ever happened to Time Out Manchester?) the firm clearly feels there is still a market to exploit for a group with local expertise, deep pockets and a brand that still resonates with the city’s populace.

CityLife may well be a case of ‘back to the future’ for the MEN, but Sowerby and co clearly think that this is one case where the sequel could be better than the original.

The opening of the food and drink festival this Friday will coincide with a focused drive to launch and market the new incarnation of CityLife.

www.citylife.co.uk

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Comments (13)

11  By Mark Garner , on 05-10-2008 12:47 Excellent stuff. Neil Sowerby and his team are first rate. It's interesting that the online publications in the area, ManCon, How-Do, Crains, Rochdale.com and a few others are showing the rest of the country how to publish online, we are streets ahead of even London, which is probably too big to create community sites as it happens. MEN cynic, let us know what you have published, i would be interested to know. My publications have 154,000 unique users, 77,000 of them taking our daily emails and 96% of those 'fluffy secs' live local and we single handedly stopped the council in their tracks when they decided to punish local car driving residents with draconian parking restrictions. I would add 'you twat, and whats your real name?' but our PR team will have me shot. Report