According to several reports,  AOL, which Time Warner announced last month it will spin off into a separate public company later this year, went on a shopping spree of its own, picking up Patch.com which offers local news for small towns and communities and Going.com, which is a local event and entertainment listing site based in Boston.

According to the sources each acquisition was in “the single-digit millions”, meaning anything above $1 Million but less than $9,999,999.

Patch.com raised a $5 million in funding back in 2007.

Here is the letter that AOL’s new CEO Tim Armstrong sent out today regarding the acquisitions (It should be noted that Mr. Armstrong was a seed investor in Patch.com but he says he rescued himself from the  negotiations for the purchase):

“””Today, we’re announcing two acquisitions that will enable us to better serve audiences by providing experiences that are highly focused on users’ own neighborhoods – Patch and Going.

Patch.com was built to provide local towns with a robust and interactive platform to publish news and information, with full-time journalists for each town covering government affairs, education issues, and community events. One of the AOLers in our All Hands meeting on May 29 asked what our plan is to help towns, like his, where the local newspaper has gone out of business. Patch is an acquisition that may eventually help that town. Under the leadership of co-founder and CEO Jon Brod, Patch has been able to launch five initial town sites since February and has just announced four additional communities. Moreover, Patch has already received over 230 user requests for “Patches” spanning 39 states and 12 countries.

The second acquisition is a small company located in Boston – Going. Going has developed a local events platform to discover and share information about things to do in a number of leading cities across the country. Under the leadership of CEO Evan Schumacher, Going has launched sites in 30 cities – including New York, Chicago, Los Angeles and Miami – and provides users with RSVP tools and advertisers with self-service event advertising.

On a personal note, I was an early investor in Patch and committed significant dollars to the vision of improving local communities with deeper online information, accountability through journalism, and a platform for communicating. In discussing our local strategy, AOL and Time Warner looked at Patch as a possible acquisition and I recused myself from that process. At the Time Warner negotiated acquisition price, I was in a position to earn a return on my investment in Patch. However, I have decided to forgo any profit from my seed investment in Patch and I have asked to receive just my seed capital in AOL shares once we separate from Time Warner.

Overall, I believe both Patch and Going will add strength and talent to our local efforts and give us an ability to have a unique and defendable local offering that helps people improve their lives. I’m excited that we’ve reached the stage where we can begin implementing in our five key strategy areas, and with today’s announcements we’re off to a great start in Local.”””