Time to Trim the Interface?

I was rereading a comment I posted yesterday about how to get people interested in videos with a narrower base of interest to actually see them, and realized that this is all about attention. Then I happened to sit back and look at the whole page. Try it - scroll to the top of the page and look at everything vying for your attention. In the header alone, we have:

Site name/home page button
Facebook login
Facebook like button
Google+ button
Search field + link to advanced search
Light/Dark interface button
RSS feed button

That's seven functional interface elements just in the header. It is followed by a menu bar with 12 menus each with a sub menu containing 3-7 items. Before you even get to the two columns of videos that all want your attention, the right being fairly condensed, you've scanned over about 30 different interface items. That is more than the window bar, tool bar, bookmark bar, and tab bar of my browser combined. Even for users that have been around for a while, it's likely there are significant parts of the interface they've never explored. For a new user trying to find a good way to browse through videos, it presents an overabundance of possibilities and I'd guess they usually just page through whatever the default settings dictate.

This is just a critique of the interface, and certainly not of the folks that created it or all of the functionality behind it. There's really no reason to get rid of any particular functionality. But its presentation really needs to be streamlined. I could offer some suggestions, but I'm sure there are people around that are better at UI design than I am.

How much of VideoSift interface would you estimate you've used? There's already a poll up, so just answer below if you're interested.

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