You know what I miss? Personal home pages. When's the last time you saw one of those? Somebody taking a bunch of stuff they'd made or written about, embedding it in HTML, and slapping it up on the web?
The closest thing we have now is blogs, and they're not all that close.
my powerpoints have (d)evolved to become just as bare now, too.
I always get the information I need - books and research they've been involved in, career history, a few personal details (family, hobbies, interests, where they live), and some links to more websites I never would have found otherwise. Maybe they don't have exciting animations, memorable logos, or even colored backgrounds, but it beats searching my university's over-engineered, information-starved profile on them.