I honestly think this is the best way to do "shout outs." People are so used to @mentioning on other platforms (Twitter, Telegram, etc.). If anything like shouts are implemented, do keep them in the activity feed and not their own separate thing. Keeping things simple is a good goal.

I do suppose it's subjective. I ignore all shouts pretty much, and feel they're a relic before social sites became popular. I'd rather see what's popular amongst the people I follow, i.e. art, stories, new folks, etc. Helps discover new things. I feel that's sort of discoverability is a strength FN has over other sites currently.

Overall it's a pretty nice landing page. Might be better if the "Pinned Artwork" is full width similar to profile (since presumably it's the best work someone wants to lead with), with the pinned journal under it. Move the user activity to where the "shouts" are. (FN doesn't have shouts, and it would be awesome if they kept them off, they're just page clutter and relatively useless.)

It would fit better with less empty space.

Another thing to keep in mind is flexibility of the layout. A lot of people browse sites on tablets nowadays, so what works on a widescreen desktop doesn't work as well for a portrait display. Although given the flexibility of FN, they already have different layouts for each, but some consistency between them is useful.