If you look at The Times's alternative home page, Times Extra, you will see that we do curate some of the best material from other sites and sources and that we actively guide our readers to this material.
So, with these three "alternative home pages" (which is really what they are) a message is being sent to users: "we've got so much AMAZING stuff to show you, we actually couldn't decide on a single screen, so we've given you THREE to choose from".
The new layout, by contrast, created an alternative home page in which users saw a constantly updated list of their friends' Facebook activity.
How many people use the alternative home pages on either side of the carousel?