Dear Localocracy Member,

I am writing you today to share some excellent news: Localocracy has been acquired by The Huffington Post Media Group! We are incredibly excited to be joining such an amazing organization. If you would like to read more about the acquisition, I've attached some links at the end of this email.

What does this mean for you?

As part of the transaction, we have closed down the Localocracy community sites. Your personal information will be deleted, and will *not* be transferred to AOL/Huffington Post. If you would like a copy of your community's content, with all personally identifiable information removed, you can email me with the name of the community that you were a member of. If you have a minute, I would also love to hear your thoughts on what made Localocracy great, and what we could have improved.

What does this mean for the Localocracy team?

Conor, Aaron, and Jay are now part of The Huffington Post, working to bring the best parts of Localocracy to The Huffington Post's 37 million monthly visitors. We have been given an amazing opportunity to make a tremendous impact. As part of The Huffington Post team, we can put our ideas into motion to the fullest extent.

How can you help? (We're recruiting!)

At The Huffington Post, we are part of the newly formed Editorial Technology team. We are working on exciting projects that will define the future of HuffPost. If you, or someone you know is interested in being a part of transformational media technology team, let me know! We are currently looking for a front-end web developer, with experience in Ruby, Rails, and Javascript. Our role within HuffPost is to tackle projects that push the envelope, have a positive social impact, and are just generally awesome.

Special Thanks.

Most importantly, we would like to thank all of you for participating on Localocracy over the past couple years. We, quite literally, could not have done this without you. We would also like to give special thanks to the UMass Entrepreneurship Initiative, the UMass Innovation Challenge, the Amherst Center for Entrepreneurship, Fuzz Productions, the Poynter Institute, MassChallenge, and the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation. We have been helped by so many people over the past few years, it is really incredible.

On behalf of the Localocracy team, Thank you!

Sincerely,

Aaron Soules, Conor White-Sullivan, Jay Boice, and Baer Tierkel

If you would like to read more about the acquisition, check out these links:

Official press release: http://corp.aol.com/2011/10/03/the-huffington-post-media-group-makes-key-anno...

BostInnovation: http://bostinnovation.com/2011/10/03/huffpo-media-group-acquires-masschalleng...

Google News results: http://www.google.com/search?tbm=nws&q=Localocracy+Huffington+Post