Good ideas and conversation. No ads, no tracking. Login or Take a Tour!
Another option might be to have the follower count in the top nav go the way of the badge count - restrict it to the profile, in which case I suspect people would keep track of their followers a lot less. Or even another option might be to use ecib's solution of followers being anonymous, but you get a one-time notification or something when you get a new follower (with their username) so you can check them out and potentially follow them back. One issue this might bring though would be that people would be spammy and follow tons of people to try to get them to follow in return, and then unfollow everyone.