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The Huffington Post Media Group(“HPMG“) has announced the acquisition of online engagement platform Localocracy. The platform providers users with the capabilities to solve problems in their communities through online engagement.
Moving over from the Localocracy team to Huffington Post Media Group are founders Conor White-Sullivan and Aaron Soules, and technology lead, Jay Boice. The new team will work closely with HuffPost employees to intersect editorial content with technology in order to deepen the sites user engagement levels.
Speaking highly of her new team members Huffington Post founder Arianna Huffington said:
“I’m delighted to announce that Conor White-Sullivan, Aaron Soules and Jay Boice are joining our team … They’re pioneers in using the web to empower citizens to improve their towns, and their unique vision and talents will enable us to deepen our users’ engagement with our sites.”
According to AOL:
Localocracy was founded in Amherst, Massachusetts, in 2009 as an online forum encouraging citizens to engage in local issues, share concerns and opinions, and rank problem-solving ideas. Its goal was to surface problems and employ the power of persuasion to spotlight solutions to issues big and small. At HPMG, founders White-Sullivan and Soules will build on their innovative approach to enhancing local democracy while leveraging HPMG’s powerful online community platform to engage its large and networked audience. Also joining the Group from Localocracy is Jay Boice, who will be instrumental in building new technologies to support enhanced online community interaction.
In a joint statement Conor and Soules said of their platform:
“What we’ve learned with Localocracy is that by harnessing user-generated content, we’re able to unleash a lot of people power. Our methodology is simple: we believe that everyone is an expert about something, so we want to give voice to that expertise and allow an exchange of ideas for all to see and participate in. We’re excited to be teaming up with The Huffington Post Media Group, a leader in social news and user engagement, and look forward to pushing the boundaries of what can be done when combining journalism and technology for the common good.”
Exactly how the team will help Huffington Post Media Group better their user engagement platform has not yet been revealed.
