My opinion on the new system:
I like the displaying of heads and how many PMs I have on the little notification icon. It lets me see whether it's someone I actually want to answer to or just another noob asking for my hat. I can't say I don't like the thread PMs, since I haven't seen them yet and used them. Honestly, my only complaint is the "Loading..." thing, since it's just not aesthetically pleasing or smooth to have that there. Also, I hate loading screens. It took 11 seconds to load a message saying only "Lol", so I think that's also a problem.
I think this could be improved by removing the loading text. That is the only problem I've encountered with it so far.