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October 30, 2007
Creating emptiness for value
In the Taoist view it's a great good to create emptiness in order to fill it with value. Compare it to a jar; you encapsulate open space in order to contain something valuable.
The emptiness also creates an urge to fill it (like a vacuum), which also can be seen online. Take for example the (relatively large) input box of microblogging tools (like Twitter); it's just waiting to be filled. Of course you can argue the value of the content that is regularly put in, but it's an interesting effect.
The question is if you (periodically) add empty or random space to your site, will it trigger higher value creation? If for example your personal portal (like Netvibes or iGoogle) would randomly generate a new tab, with some empty widgets and a remix of your existing widgets. Would it make you reconsider your current setup and improve it? Also, will overall value increase if you are forced (after a certain threshold) to delete something old when adding something new?
Posted by Almar at October 30, 2007 09:48 AM