That being said, as mk mentioned, there is also a value to knowing who your followers are, and you'd lose that if you removed the ability to know this entirely. I think that a good compromise is to remove the color cues and still retain the ability to see all your followers on your profile page if you want to actively look them up.

I agree with this entirely. Keep the follower count and list on the profile page (similar to how the badge count was recently removed from the top nav). And remove the color cues.

To add to this, if this solution was implemented, the only metric still next to the username would be the notifications/full-hubwheel count, so I think it'd be cool to integrate that into the Hubski logo that appears to the left of the username. Have the center circle glow orange if you have unread notifications, and have the outside circles light up (either orange or the lighter blue) to indicate how close you are to a full hubwheel. Along with the little "x 2" next to it to indicate how many full hubwheels you currently have.

I think this would work well both aesthetically and functionally, since the current logo serves as a link to your main feed, of which there is obviously already a link in the main navigation in the top right.