No good home pages?

We're deep into a discussion of Squidoo's home page, and it occured to me that except for the exception that proves the rule (Google), there are no good home pages.

Certainly not Amazon or eBay or even Yahoo. Not MSN or AOL or Technorati, either. Go look at these pages through the eyes of a newbie, or of a power user or of someone who stumbled over without knowing exactly why. Do they succeed?

Home pages try to do too much. They try to explain to the unitiated, retrain the veterans, and get out of the way of the power users.

It's a little like book covers, actually. Book covers generally fail to sell a book. What they do if they succeed is they get you to pick the book up, and to pick it up in the right sort of mood.

My new strategy is:
1. above all else, interact.
2. avoid the home page at all costs. If I can get you to use the product without having to work your way through an artificial front door, that's a good thing.