[IxDA Discuss] Don't Be Too Innovative with Your UI...

[Dan Saffer]

...so claims Rich Skrenta, founder of Topix.

"People don't lean forward and squint at web pages to figure out how  
they work anymore. They instantly recognize -- within 100  
milliseconds -- which class of site a page belong to -- search  
result, retail browse, blog, newspaper, spam site, message board,  
etc. And if they don't recognize what kind of page they're on, they  
generally give up and hit the back button.

Our news pages didn't conform to any standard metaphor. Some people  
thought they were search results. But they weren't, our pure news  
search was a separate section of the site. Some people thought we  
were a newspaper, with human editors. Some visitors thought we were a  
blog. But our news items didn't behave in very bloggy ways. Most  
people just didn't know who we were or what the page was trying to do."

http://www.skrenta.com/2007/04/what_do_you_do_when_your_succe.html