widgets seem to overflow the web. Yet the technology behind it all is fairly simple. Why the sudden hype?
"Widgets have been around for many years but have definitely grown in popularity as social networks have grown due to the viral nature of widgets and the ability to customize your profile on social networking sites. By nature, widget code can be easily grabbed and added to any site so if you create a cool widget it can spread very quickly as friends visit their friend's pages and discover new widgets that they can grab and add to their own sites."
How did you come up with the idea to use widgets from a different perspective, compared to existing ones?
"We wanted to help bands increase their exposure on social networking sites and eliminate the manual entry of information so bands can enter their information once and broadcast it on all social networking sites. A band that comes to gydget.com can enter its myspace url and gydget will autofill the gydget with its primary image, events and YouTube video. From there the band can customize the colors, add ticket links, add merchandise links, etc. When it's done, we provide tips for maximizing their exposure on the web. We have seen bands get thousands of widget grabs in 24 hours by sending out MySpace bulletins. We have seen bands double their exposure on MySpace in just a few days - getting more views on fan pages than on their main page."
Do you feel a gydget can replace an artist's presence on social networks such as MySpace?
"No, a gydget compliments an artist's profile on a social networking site - it doesn't replace it. A gydget is essentially a mini MySpace page that an artist creates so that fans can grab it and add to their own profile pages. If I don't know about Paul van Dyke, I wouldn't go to his MySpace page. But, I might be exposed to his music by seeing his gydget on one of my friend's profile pages. The next logical fan is the friend of a fan so viral widgets make a lot of sense for the music industry."
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