The post below was submitted to us by Scott Talkov, Editor-in-Chief of ThingsToDoInlandEmpire.com, a guide to entertainment, events and discounts in southern California. If you want to see an impressive example of what people can do with a free copy of WordPress and free Facebook and Twitter accounts, check out this site. 

The claims and statistics cited in this article are the author’s, and we don’t vouch for their validity. 

The local blog ThingsToDoInlandEmpire.com, focusing on arts, entertainment and events in southern California, recently surpassed well-established print media outlets in Riverside and San Bernardino on several well-known metrics.

The site now averages twice the traffic of the region’s most widely distributed weekly print publication and four times the traffic of the region’s most widely distributed monthly magazine, both of which cover the same arts and entertainment focus, According to third party traffic verification firm Quantcast. Those estimates are mirroredby well-known Internet ratings website Alexa.com.

The website also counts more Facebook likes than the region’s largest weekly or monthly print publications, as well as one of the region’s largest daily publications.

The site began with an idea from Adina Hemley, a non-profit director in the Inland Empire. “My fiance and I would search the Internet for fun events every weekend, and then it occurred to me, ‘I know I’m not the only looking for things to do in the Inland Empire,’” said Hemley.

Scott Talkov, a 30-year-old lawyer in Riverside and self-described techie, started the website with Hemley in early 2011 to aggregate their research on the hottest places to go in the Inland Empire. Since then, traffic has doubled every three months.

By working together with more than 20 authors, the site collects data and perspectives from dozens of cities throughout the inland Southern California region known as the Inland Empire. The region counts over four-million people and witnessed the fastest growth over the past decade among the nation’s top 25 metropolitan areas.

“While the economy and print media may be down, people are still having fun, they’re just turning to new sources to find out what to do,” said Kris Daams, a former newspaper reporter and author on the site.

Talkov says new technologies allow information to collected and distributed instantly at essentially no cost. The website is based on WordPress and communicates with followers through the social media tools Facebook and Twitter, all of which are free.

When asked what drives this site, author Nate Hutchinson insisted “We want to continue to prove people wrong who claim there is nothing to do in the Inland Empire.”

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