From left, Tim Blankenship, Dave Segal and Eric Smith, the creators of the Daily Dose blog, hold a party at Local 121, in Providence, this week. “I’m just surprised that no one has done this in Providence,” Smith said of the blog.

The Providence Journal / Kris Craig

PROVIDENCE

A little after 11 Tuesday night, Eric Smith glanced around the packed bar at Local 121 and saw a room filled with people he knew a little, or not at all. Most didn’t know each other, either. But all had one thing in common: they had all read about the party on the Providence Daily Dose.

“I’m pretty excited. I kind of feel like we accomplished something,” Smith said.

Smith and two acquaintances, David Segal and Tim Blankenship, are the creators of www.ProvidenceDailyDose.com, a catch-all Web site that has become a snarky, irreverent clearinghouse for all things Providence since its September launch.

Stuffed in between postings about snowstorms, the broken escalator at the train station, local and national politics and columns on food and dating, the Daily Dose has one main mission: to tell the 20-somethings and college students of Providence where the best nightlife and events are to be found, every night of the week. Its voice is that of an all-knowing arbiter of cool, throwing out profanity-laced criticism on which bars are up, which bands are down, and who in the local media and government deserves a tweak today.

Depending on the day, a volunteer staff of 10 to 15 writers and columnists post around 10 items, and the site is visited by 300 to 400 unique users per day, which Internet analysts said is impressive for a site of its recent vintage and local appeal.

Smith said that the site has given a voice to a large group of young people in Providence who didn’t feel they had a place all their own.

“It’s younger people who are in the thick of it, and I think that’s what sets it apart. And I think that’s why people identify with the voice of the site. It’s all young people,” he said. “There’s some news, there’s some analysis, there’s some entertainment, there’s some gossipy stuff, there’s an article about comic books for nerds — I don’t know, I’m just surprised that no one has done this in Providence.”

Tuesday night, instead of posting what band was playing or which bar had a DJ, the Daily Dose held its own holiday party, trying to bring together the people who write the site with the people who read the site — and find out who the heck they all are.

“We always check it to see what’s going on tonight,” said Matthew Soursourian, 21, a Brown senior who read about the party and came out to the club Tuesday night along with Brown medical student Almaz Dessie, 22.

“We were really excited to come and meet other people who read it,” Dessie said.

THE DAILY DOSE concept is nothing new in the nation’s bigger cities; sites such as New York’s Gothamist.com or Chicago’s Gapersblock.com try to provide the same mix of local analysis, humor, nightlife and sporadic news-gathering. Gothamist LLC has successfully farmed out the model nationwide and created sites like Seattlest and Phillyist.

But it is rare to find a blog like Daily Dose or northern New Jersey’s Baristanet.com, that was created by locals with no background in Internet media.

“All these other bigger cities have these Web sites, and I just figured that there’s no reason why we can’t have something similar going on; we’re smaller, but there’s no reason why not,” Smith said.

There are numerous other popular blogs in Rhode Island and in Providence, but most are more issue or interest specific: LotsofNoise.com focuses on the local music scene; RiFuture.org and AnchorRising.com are forums on local politics.

Segal, 28, a state representative, and Blankenship, 29, who works for WaterFire, knew each other from high school. Smith, 31, is a local DJ who met Segal this spring through friends at a bar, and soon the conversation turned to Providence’s lack of a Gothamist-style blog. The two discussed starting one.

Smith assumed that it was a barroom conversation that would go nowhere. But soon Segal had recruited Blankenship and his Web design skills and assembled a small stable of writers. After a few meetings this summer, they were ready to launch.

“The longest part was picking a name — after that it was like a week. ‘Providence is alright’ was the big competitor,” Blankenship said.

The site was only seen by 40 or 50 unique users each day at first, but word of mouth spread, and the raunchy and popular “Jersey Girls” sex advice column was referenced on national sites and drew eyes to Daily Dose. Soon, it was clear that people well beyond their immediate circle of friends were reading the site.

“We’re getting over 300 unique hits a day, and I definitely don’t know 300 people, so.” Smith said.

The crowd at Tuesday’s party was a mix of more than 100 hailing from all over downtown, East Side and West Side Providence, where the one thing everyone could relate to was Daily Dose.

“I made a joke before — it’s like the communists, the hippies, the hipsters, the college students and the normal barhopping people all came together. It’s like a social experiment to see all the categories of people here,” said Anna Aufseeser, who knew Segal but read about the party online.

Right now, the site doesn’t even bring in enough income to pay its $15 monthly Web hosting fees. But Smith said that the Daily Dosers intend to begin soliciting advertising in the next few weeks and dream of someday blogging as a part-time job. They think they connect to a young market that is tough for advertisers to reach.

Smith plans to continue to host weekly Tuesday night parties at Local 121 and envision a unique scene developing around it. “It’s kind of a cool thing to have a thing every week where it’s ‘Daily Dose presents,’ here’s our weekly party, come hang out with us, the music is awesome, Local 121 is awesome, hang out.”

Adam Roth, an assistant professor of communications studies at the University of Rhode Island who studies social networking and online dating sites, said that bringing disparate groups together in the real world through the loose connection of a nightlife-oriented blog is rare, if not unique.

“That’s the only connection that they have, and it’s not exactly much of a connection at that,” Roth said.

Providence is particularly well-suited to a blog like this, he said. It has just enough nightlife to support a thriving social scene, but is small enough that most young people know of all the major bars, clubs, concert halls and restaurants, and can get to them quickly and easily.

“I think they’re on to something. I think the town is ripe for something like that,” Roth said.

dbarbari@projo.com