Awesome feedback. Thanks.
So here's the million-dollar question: What is the context that the user is browsing? The people who say things? The web site that sourced the quote? The people who posted things? The topic that the quote falls under (you can see the topic -- it's the tooltip that pops up when you hover over the quote)
I'm getting a lot of "get a designer" advice, and I'll cop to being a poor designer any day of the week -- I suck. But even with a designer, you don't want the thing to look like a 747 cockpit. Simply because you can search by something doesn't mean the UI should allow it. With a desire to keep the UI as brutally simple as possible, what do you think is the context people would like to see as a higher-up heading?
I'm browsing Reddit right now, and see the following "quote" headlines:
* Tamil pulp: "each chapter usually has at least one murder or explosion or someone getting eaten by a cheetah or attacked with black magic." [Context is a review of pulp fiction of some sort - not sure what "Tamil" is but I'd guess it's a culture or subgenre]
* "The iPhone vision of the mobile Internet’s future omits controversy, sex, and freedom, but includes strict limits on who can know what and who can say what. ... I hate it." - Tim Bray (self.linux) [The context is the iPhone's restricted platform in contrast to Linux's open platform]
* "But Piglet wasn't listening, he was so agog at the thought of seeing Chritopher Robin's blue braces again. He had only seen them once before, when he was much younger, and, being a little over-excited by them, had had to go to bed half an hour earlier than usual..." [Excerpt from a book. Intent seems to be to convey unintended innuendo. Doesn't do anything to make me want to read further.]
* "He also held the fire hose between his legs like it was a penis and pretended to pee on the flames. Right in front of my wife and daughter!" (i.imgur.com) [The subreddit and domain tell me this is going to be an amusing picture, and makes me want to click through]
In 3 of those 4 cases, the quote isn't the content itself, but a pointer to some larger piece of content. The Tim Bray quote is the whole of the content, but is presented in a context (Linux and open software advocacy) that makes sense. In all of those cases, I don't just consume the quote and say "oh, that's inspiring" and move on with my day - they spur me to learn more and who is saying it, what they're saying it about, and why they're saying it. Reddit is very much a different approach to content, so I don't expect a 1:1 mapping, but the Tim Bray quote is a pretty good example. There's a quote by an industry leader regarding a topic that I'm interested in (software freedom, platform flexibility, etc) because I've elected to follow the Linux subreddit. I'm presented with enough information to be told what the context is (Software freedom philosophy), who said it (Tim Bray), and why the quote is being presented (it is of interest to the Linux community).
You're absolutely right that information overload is terrible for design - that's very key to success. However, part of design is knowing what to emphasize and what to minimize, so you guide the user's attention through your content. Insofar as what you're presenting, I'd offer the following observations:
* Using tooltips/hovers to present critical information is really bad. It doesn't work at all on mobile platforms, and the only existing UI paradigms that use that technique are icons and XKCD's inside jokes. It is a fairly non-obvious way of conveying information.
* The quote attribution and context are grey and "faded out" - you place more visual importance on who posted the quote than who said it. This seems backwards to me.
* The "Posted X time ago" bar is the most visually striking piece of the page. You don't want people looking at that first - you want them looking at the quote.
* The quote, souce, and user are all clickable, but there are no visual cues that they are, even on rollover.
(At this point I've lost my train of thought, and will have to return to it later)
Do forgive me if I'm being over-critical. I'm trying to be an objective user, and give you an honest read of the things that go through my head as I use it.
Edit: The padding helps. Now I'd desaturate the background a bit. grin
My initial impression of the concept is that it suffers from lack of context - quotes are interesting, but usually only in the context of an existing discussion or topic. For example, in Newsweek or whatnot, their "quotes of the week" page has the quote, and then explains the context it was in. For example:
> "Pie is bad, and we are dedicated to providing a safe and pie-free environment for our children as we move towards the future." -- President Obama speaking to the National Cake Frosters Association
If you could make the design point to sources more easily, so the users feels like it's a lead-in to a piece of content, that may alleviate that issue.
It seems like the niche you could capture would be sort of an expansion what the Twitter trending topics is already - a high-level view of the things being said by interesting people, and what people think of them. I think your concept implements that, but it doesn't really present it to the user. My first impression was "well, it's Reddit, except I have to read more to find something interesting". If you can find a way to present it in such a way that the user is presented with easily-consumable, interesting, relevant information with easy access to context and reactions, it could have some interesting potential.