GovLoop, an online social network for government workers that was started by a federal worker, has been sold to GovDelivery Inc., a venture-backed government communications platform, with GovLoop founder Steve Ressler as its head of social networking.

Terms of the sale were not disclosed.

The service currently has about 20,000 members, and Ressler would like to increase it to 100,000, he told the Wall Street Journal.

GovDelivery is "a supplier of government-to-citizen email and wireless communication systems (mostly for mass notification) to state and local but also to some federal agencies," according to Gartner government analyst Andrea DiMaio. However, noting that government users are now allowed to use mainstream services such as Facebook (though not Twitter), he wondered in his blog how much relevance GovLoop would continue to have -- comments that Ressler himself agreed with. "I see the future of GovLoop as a “knowledge network” for government – a place where government people can go to get their questions answered to do their job better," he said. "That can be asking a question on their government career, on a niche topic like how to implement a wiki, or a broad scope like talking about the future of cloud in government."