Local2Me Friends & Neighbors,

I am very pleased to announce that the Local2Me email and web service has been acquired by Smalltown, Inc. (www.smalltown.com).

Earlier this year I decided it was time for Local2Me's next step, which was diverging from my career path at Yahoo!. Local2Me is a thriving online community that's an important tool in my daily life, as I know it has been in many of yours. I am very happy that it will have a continued lifeline in the hands of Smalltown, which through my research I found to be the best match to the spirit of L2M. Check out their video.

I have been extremely impressed with Smalltown CEO Hal Rucker, who I've known since we worked together at Excite.com. He's an exceptional person, with an unusually straightforward, honest style and high level of integrity. I know Local2Me will be in good hands with him, and I am excited about Smalltown's direction and potential. They are using new technology to make it easy for you to share more and different kinds of information than can be conveyed just in email.

The Local2Me service launched in 2000, and over the last seven years community members have posted over 31,000 neighborhood messages in 90 towns about wide-ranging topics, from great pediatric dentists to Halloween costumes for sale, trustworthy appliance repair, neighborhood crime issues, anti-raccoon measures, and more! It's a rich, ever-growing collection of unique local knowledge that will continue to thrive at Smalltown. For now, you won't notice any difference in the L2M service because it will be a while before Smalltown integrates L2M into their platform. Also, Hal admits up front that the Smalltown Discussions section needs to be improved before integrating the L2M community, and his team will be soliciting ideas and feedback from L2M users as part of the redesign process.

Many have helped me with the service over the years, but I want to especially call out two people. Big thanks to Danny van der Rijn, who has helped me with site moderation since 2003. And the biggest thanks to my wife, Kasey, who has been my helper, advisor, and supporter from the beginning!

Thank you all for your participation on and support of Local2Me. It has been a lot of fun and I look forward to its next steps with Smalltown.

Cheers,
Michael Olivier
Founder, Local2Me
(michaelo@local2me.com)