Any plugin developers care to tinker on a project with me? I'm working on a new profile view that is 3-column and acts and appears much more like the Facebook profile views. I've posted a screenshot of the current version I'm playing with over at ImageShack, you can click on the thumbnail above to get a better view.
Basic profile info like name, avatar, brief description and description are in the upper left column. Below that in the left column are links/embedded widgets to the more common Elgg features. These work just like normal widgets except they can't be moved or removed.
The middle column is exclusively the user's wall area. 3 views (4 really) are available, the Users and their Friends activities on his wall, just those comments and actions on the user by their friends, or just the user's activity. If you are looking at someone else's profile, you will also have a fourth, wall to wall view available.
The right column can be populated by the owner with various typical widgets, as they desire.
One thing I still need to add is an Info tab that will display more of the User's profile details.
The major point on this is the middle column. It's designed to work much more like Facebook. The message board is replaced by direct messages and comments to the user's wall. Conversations can be followed directly in the wall view. They can even be broken out into a full page view if needed.
This is based off my 3-column dashboard, so the code still contains a LOT of relics from it, a lot of raw, unrefined code, but works on my site (1.7.2). It's nowhere near ready for primetime, much less even qualifying for an early beta plugin. But, if you are into Elgg coding, are interested in contributing ideas and preferably help with additional code/cleanup, PM me and I'll arrange to get you a zip file of the code.