Scoble tried an experiment - getting back to a basic theme on his blog and ditching all of the widgets and gadgets... and an interesting thing happened:

I wanted to see who would complain and who would praise it. Some complained that it was too unprofessional. Others complained it's hard to read on high resolution monitors (the text goes all the way across the browser). Still others missed my "brand." But something else happened. Other people said they really liked this new theme. In pressing in more I think they liked that it was different than, say, TechCrunch or Mashable and that it had an anti-advertising stance on it. Also, some people said it was more readable because I got rid of the advertising and the friendfeed widget.

I'm not surprised, although a bet a bunch of social media "experts" are, or would profess to be. At the end of the day, when people come to your site, they want information on what you sell (or in the case of someone like Scoble, on what you do). This is all a lot less complicated than a lot of people say it is: just tell people your story, in a straightforward way.

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