GovDelivery Acquires GovLoop

Outsourced government email delivery services firm GovDelivery has announced the acquisition of social networking provider GovLoop today. GovLoop currently has 20,000 members according to a comment by Steve Ressler, CEO and co-founder of GovLoop. GovLoop launched in May 2008. Financial terms of the acquisition were not released.

Carolyn Duffy Marsan at NetworkWorld has an in-depth post about the acquisition. Carolyn notes that GovDelivery is often referred to as “Facebook for Feds” and that the founders of both services met at Government 2.0 Camp back in March.

From the announcement, “GovDelivery’s reach has grown exponentially in the past two years. Currently, between 10,000 and 100,000 new people signup to receive updates to government information each day via the GovDelivery platform.” It looks like the two companies were made to work together as the email delivery can point recipients to the social networking platform. The companies believe that together they can help spread social media throughout the U.S. government.

Gautham Nagesh from NextGov notes that GovLoop was a pet project for Ressler.