A type-centric redesign of Twitter.com
vcarrer.com
vcarrer.com
Type-centric means using size to emphasize relevance. When everything's the exact same size your design is flawed.
I follow 100 or so people but they are not all equal, and in my mind I associate their tweets with a reputation based on my previous knowledge. Some of my follows for example only tweet banal day-to-day activities, while others are sources of interesting links and/or their interests have a greater amount of overlap with my own. Thus, I almost always scan the avatar/username first before deciding if their tweet is likely to be worth the read. Having to look in two separate places in order to carry out this process is very tiring on the eyes.
Even better, I wish there was some way to automatically separate "boring life-y bits" and "interesting hobbies" out. I care about the boring life-y bits from people I know but not from people I follow because they have done cool things professionally.
But honestly the voting burden is too high to make it work I think. Also, I really wish things were like the 2ch/4chan model, where I could evaluate the quality of content on its own merits instead of on who said it. But that might just be too much.
The left column with ragged right justified time and twitter client stamp draws far too much attention and is not important enough to warrant so much emphasis.
The tweet itself seems almost accidental -- the main focus is on the photo itself.
Also, remove the twitter logo because it's not needed? Really? wince
On the upside, I like the look of the leftmost column a lot, and the three column layout works well. I like how the vertical space is highly emphasized.
Also, I never realized how awesome italicized Georgia font looks.
EDIT: Also, I think that a better color-palette would help.
(Note, I only skimmed the article)
In Marketing and Strategic Management this effect is called the 9X effect. It stipulates, that you underestimate the power/usefulness of a new product 3 times and overestimate the old product 3 times as well. This means a new product has to be ten times better to be successful.
As you mentioned, underlying to this whole thing is, that most people are change averse and therefore resisting it. Only around five percent of people truly like change (early adopters). All the others have to be forced to use something new.