AmericanTowns and Virtual Town Hall Offer A Powerful, Hyper-Local Combination in Massachusetts Town

Companies Provide Information and Resources for Franklin, MA

FRANKLIN, MA – August 20, 2008 - Community website specialist AmericanTowns.com and government website provider Virtual Town Hall announced today that the town of Franklin, Massachusetts has contracted with them to serve as its principal source of community information and to host its municipal website, respectively.

AmericanTowns.com will now provide a hyper-local platform where residents and organizations of Franklin can find and share the best local information about their community, including a unified calendar of events; announcements by and links to local organizations; and local services and resources. Virtual Town Hall is one of the major national providers of online services to city, town and county municipalities. Virtual Town Hall will host Franklin’s website and support its government content managers.

“For many years the Town of Franklin has been fortunate to have very active web content contributors and a strong internet presence. AmericanTowns.com and Virtual Town Hall enable us to take this to the next level with clearer delineation of Town and Community web content and through expanded services for both Town Government and Community Organizations.,” said Tim Rapoza, Franklin’s Director of Technology Services. “It really allows us to focus on the task of municipal governance and have access to a level of web services that can grow as our needs grow.”

This is the first time that AmericanTowns.com and Virtual Town Hall have joined forces to work with a single town. “It’s the perfect combination [of capabilities],” said Ted Buerger, chairman of AmericanTowns.com. “The linking of our platforms will give Franklin residents access to levels of content and services previously unavailable on any government website – and provides a foundation for even greater expansion down the road. We are excited to be partnering with Virtual Town Hall and their 2000+ municipal employee users.”

Millard Rose, president of Virtual Town Hall, said, “In the years ahead local governments must increase the percentage of services they provide through the web – it is the most efficient, consistent method of service delivery. The addition of AmericanTowns.com’s robust community portal to Virtual Town Hall’s broad array of government E-Services will drive significantly more people to the web for their local information and services. It will also further strengthen “the sense of community” Franklin already enjoys and these days that is increasingly difficult to do. Everyone wins and we look forward to expanding the number of Virtual Town Hall / AmericanTowns.com clients in the future.”

About AmericanTowns

AmericanTowns is the leader in collecting and organizing community information for local residents, empowering them to find and share the best local information for their town. 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, local insights, videos, local resources and special tools for organizations. Local residents can add to, comment on, or otherwise edit this content. Dedicated to connecting citizens, community organizations and locally-focused businesses, 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. The fastest growing site in the "hyper-local" space, AmericanTowns.com is headquartered in Fairfield, Connecticut. Visit www.AmericanTowns.com.

About Virtual Town Hall

Virtual Town Hall has been a premier provider of government web services since 1998, when government websites were in their infancy. The continuous expansion of its web design, content management, and hosting services is focused exclusively on governments. Through its deep understanding of government website “Best Practices” VTH configures a tailored web presence for each of its 250+ Local and County Government clients. Virtual Town Hall is headquartered in Maynard, Massachusetts. Visit www.virtualtownhall.net