Really? I had the opposite reaction. I found the simplicity drew me to the text. At the end I clicked the footer because it seemed shiny/pretty, and it took me right to the email form.

I feel like a lot of websites, especially the ones which want me to sign up or understand their service, throw way to much crap at me for it to make sense. Two sentence mission statements, ominous screenshots, and cheeky feature lists only go so far --- in this case I appreciate the straightforward mission statement.

I agree, it's a little obscure. But to be fair, the page is so simple, and there's so few things to explore, it's hard to not get curious about what's in the corners. On the other hand, a poorly calibrated monitor could potentially make the lightish-gray-on-not-quite-as-lightish-gray stuff nigh invisible.

Sure, you can see it if you look for it, but the only purpose of this landing page is to collect emails and twitter followers, and it could do that much better if it had a big visible email input field right below the main paragraphs.

What does that orange dot signify?

I can't talk for others, but I love that page. The "Call to action" button took me literally no time to find and I was happy to click on it. A bit half-page button would have just frustrated me and I wouldn't have subscribed.

While I agree it's not the greatest landing page ever, I don't think it's THAT bad. I spent more time typing this then it took me to read the page and give them my email for an invite.

I like the simplicity of it. Simple logo, text that isn't under contrasted. Simple description of what they're working on, and simple ways to sign up for notifications.

I didn't spot it at all.

No, not the worst. It's not at all ugly. That's something.

It's a trick - we all clicked that little gray icon didn't we?

I suspect that it is intentionally hard to find.