Shell Oil has been running an ad in the print media which shows a full, blank page with the following scrawled in the corner…

“The blank page, still the most challenging environment there is.”

We have released an early version of the Sharendipity platform to a small group of people, and this message is ringing true for them as well. When Sharendipity users embark on creating a new casual game or slide show, they start with a blank, white screen and aren’t always sure where to get started.

It is a tricky problem. After all, the blank page may be challenging for some, but it offers the ultimate power as well. If we forced our creators to start with templates it would be a disservice to the creative individuals that don’t want to be painted into a corner.

As the small print on the ad goes on to say, “The mind finds freedom difficult to handle. It prefers parameters, rules, precedents.” There will clearly be a significant fraction of our users that have good ideas, but need a place to get started. This is one of the problems we’re working on now to get more users engaged in content creation. What ideas do you have to facilitate this? Are there elements of templating in other applications - whether it is PowerPoint, Wikis, or some other creative tool - that you like or dislike?