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Each community webspace is accessible at AmericanTowns.com and features newcontent, new partners, a new user interface and a new technology framework -- allbuilt on AmericanTowns established strength in community events and otherhyper-local information.
We re introducing a new way for people to find and share local information, saidJim Maglione, co-president of Community, AmericanTowns. There s a lot of good localcontent on the web and offline, but it s not always easy to find. We ve collectedand organized this information for every town in America, and made it easy for eachcommunity to add to, edit or share as they wish.
New Features
In addition to having the nation s most extensive calendar of hyper-local communityevents, with more than 1 million new events added per month, AmericanTowns.com nowincludes the following new features for each town in America:
A hometown map, with links to maps of homes for sale, local restaurants,farmers markets, aerial views of each town, and more;
News stories from local media, and links to discussions of hot topics, as well aspress releases from local community organizations;
An updated collection of Internet videos on town events and activities, whichusers can easily add to, using popular video-sharing sites;
Access to 10 million business profiles, which supplement the basic listings ofmore than 17 million small and mid-size local businesses; and
An expanded Community Resources area that now also offers train schedules,traffic information, local sales, ways to protect your privacy, an environmentsection, and a guide to key community links and online resources; plus more depth ineach section for example, the new real estate section features recent sales,photos of homes for sale, the sales records of local real estate agents, localmarket trends, local neighborhood information, apartments for rent, and informationabout local foreclosures.
Each of these new features allow users to add their own content or to suggest newsources or links for their town s unique community webspace. Similarly, towns withno previous presence on the Internet can now post community information online, orcan change their town s radius setting to find events in nearby towns.
Improving User Experience
To accommodate the growth of content, features, and site usage, AmericanTowns hasincreased its server capacity, streamlined its database and created a brand new userinterface.
To enhance user experience, each community webspace has a clean, warm, more visualpresentation, and straightforward ways for users to sort information by the type ofcontent, explained Edward Panian, AmericanTowns co-president of Technology. Ournew interface gets people quickly and easily to the local information they areseeking in their everyday life.
AmericanTowns new technology framework also pulls in useful local information fromselected industry verticals, such as Topix, Traffic.com, Alliance Reservations,CareerBuilder, Trulia.com, and Verizon s yellow pages provider, Superpages.com. Atthe same time, the site helps community organizations promote their initiatives tolocal media, through a free one-click PR tool, and to other websites such asSuperpages.com, which recently integrated AmericanTowns community calendar into itssite. Additional content-sharing initiatives are in development.
AmericanTowns is moving local beyond the standard search model that favorscontent with the best SEO work, to a community webspace model that organizes themost useful information around the unique needs of real communities and is shapedover time by each community s input, said Ted Buerger, chairman of AmericanTowns.
About AmericanTowns.comAmericanTown s is a national network of community-based websites where residents canfind and share local information. For every town in America, AmericanTowns hascreated a community webspace that brings together the nation's most extensiveonline database of community events, community groups, news, local resources andspecial tools for organizations. Dedicated to connecting citizens, communityorganizations and locally-focused businesses and strengthening the bonds of ournation's communities, AmericanTowns has featured more than 10 million communityevents in the last 12 months, and offers powerful tools to help more than 120,000listed community organizations interact more effectively with local citizens.Founded in 2000, AmericanTowns is headquartered in Fairfield, Connecticut. Visitwww.AmericanTowns.com.
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