AmericanTowns.com Expands Its Unique Town-Based Offering to Include Community Bloggers

2008-04-01 23:53:57 -

www.americantowns.com - For AmericanTowns.com Alfred Leach, 212-481-2826 al@LeachCommunications.com or Caroline Langley, 212-481-2826 cl@LeachCommunications.com AmericanTowns.com today invited town residents across the country to recommend their favorite "community blogs," or to start their own blog about the goings-on in their town. AmericanTowns staff will review the suggestions, and add the best to its network of "community webspaces," which AmericanTowns operates for each town in America.

Criteria for a blog's inclusion in AmericanTowns.com will be: (i) relevance to the local community, (ii) up-to-date postings, and (iii) pro-community orientation. Suggestions can be submitted by going to AmericanTowns.com, inserting a zip code or town name, and, from the resulting town homepage, clicking on any "suggestion" button.

"We think a good community blog adds richly to a community's awareness of issues and initiatives and promotes discussion on-line and around town," explained Jim Maglione, AmericanTowns co-president, Community. "So we want to make it more likely that community bloggers will be discovered by local residents, just as we help local groups get the word out to the community. And we want to encourage more community blogging, so that eventually there is at least one community blog in every town in America."

AmericanTowns already provides each town in the U.S. with its own "community webspace," each rich with "everything local" -- local events, local groups, news and announcements, maps, videos, on-line resources and local services - while enabling community residents to add to or edit this content.

The addition of community-focused blogs is made possible by AmericanTowns' robust technology framework, which brings together highly specific local information (e.g. community blogs, train schedules, or local farmers markets) drawn from its extraordinary database of national scope and scale. AmericanTowns unveiled this new technology platform in February, 2008, and then indicated its plans to develop tools to bring community blogs into AmericanTowns.com in the near future.

"We're using the power of the Internet to connect real local communities," said Ed Panian, co-president of Technology, AmericanTowns. "That's good for local residents, including community bloggers; it's good for locally-focused businesses that support us with advertising; and it's good for the community."

About AmericanTowns.com

AmericanTowns is a national network of community-based websites where residents can find and share local information. For every town in America, AmericanTowns has created a "community webspace" that brings together the nation's most extensive online database of community events, community groups, news, maps, videos, local resources and special tools for organizations. Dedicated to connecting citizens, community organizations and locally-focused businesses and strengthening the bonds of our nation's communities, AmericanTowns has featured more than 10 million community events in the last 12 months, and offers powerful tools to help more than 120,000 listed community organizations interact more effectively with local citizens. Founded in 2000, AmericanTowns is headquartered in Fairfield, Connecticut. Visit www.AmericanTowns.com.

"A Blog for Every Town in America"