Wireframes of some of my favorite sites:
Quora.com
Quora uses the middle row to present you the latest stories of topics, questions and people you follow. It manages to do this is a very concise way without overwhelming the user with information. It uses the right row to then introduce you to people you may be interested in following based on you following them on twitter already.
StackOverflow.com
StackOverflow uses it starting page to give what it calls "top questions". This the ones with the most votes, answers and views by fellow developers. These are calculated by I would say, a complicated sorting algorithm that keeps only the most relevant question at forefront. The right row is used to feature the hottest questions in stackexchange popular networks. Stackexchange is a growing network of individual communities, each dedicated to serving experts in a specific field.
Amazon.com
Amazon has one of the powerful search engines in the business. Making search the site extremely fast, accurate, and intelligent. Amazon also goes through the trouble of creating a custom page for you. It has your name on it. It serves to list recommendations based on varies things, viewing history, reviewing, wish list, etc. It seems to get it right, most of the time. Its reviewing system is also the best I have seen making the site my goto to do research on products I'm interested in buying.