Simpleform MLKSHK

What I did:
Went to my homepage.

What I expected to happen:
Find links to places I frequent (incoming/my shake/friends shake) are given prominent placement on the page.

What actually happened:
The links to places I frequent are buried in a drop-down style widget at the top of the page.

I like that it's easy to see what tools are available to me, but I question the prominence of their placement relative to links to the places I am most likely to visit on the site. Of course I only have my own experience to rely on here, but I feel like the interface would be more useful if those links to different pages of interest to me were more prominent, rather than buried in the drop down.

The links to the cool tools are great, but I would imagine that these tools are mostly of interest to"power users". Even for power users the tools are of maximum interest the first time you see them. I haven't tested, but does the tools menu go away after you click on one of the links? If a user has hit the home page 100 times and hasn't installed the tools, are those links really serving a purpose for that user?

Maybe you've made them as prominent as you have to ensure that as many people as possible are testing/using these new ways of interacting with the site. That would make a lot of sense in the short term... There's also the case of where to put these links on pages like the incoming page where there is no sidebar. I like the idea of having each of the links always available, but maybe you have plans for more "pages" you'll be linking to?

Either way, if your goal is to optimize for intermediate users I would argue that placing links to Incoming/My Shake/Friends shake above the cool tools section in the sidebar on the home page would be beneficial to most users most of the time.