TALKING ABOUT WIDGETS

How many artists have a gydget right now and how many times are they actually viewed?

"More than 5000 gydgets have been created. Collective views of all the gydgets are around 55 million a month."

What about your business model? Is all that promotion and bandwidth for us laptoprockers to grab for free? Who is paying your bills?

"Building a gydget is always free for an artist. We want our service to be accessible to any artist - signed or independent - for no fee. We have affiliate deals with ticketing companies so monetize ticket sales through the widget and we are also developing sponsorship models and other revenue sources."

Now that we think of it. Do you know where the name widget comes from?

"I wish I did."

Being somewhat surprised Michelle couldn't tell us, we decided to google the subject ourselves. We landed on Niall Kennedy's blog and learned from there that widget concepts date back to the invention of the graphical user interface for home use. Bud Tribble and Andy Hertzfeld brainstormed a concept named " desk ornaments" in 1981 for the original Macintosh operating system. Apple owns the trademark on the term "web widget" for "software for use in creating other Internet and web-based software."

Why is it always Apple who's coming up with the cool stuff first? Well, never mind. Time to create your own widget ...... oops - gydget.

  gydget.com

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