Check out this designer’s gorgeous re-imagining of Twitter

Twitter’s not afraid of big changes. There have been several “new” Twitters over the years, but what if the social network was completely re-imagined? What might it look like? Thanks to Australian designer Fred Nerby, we have an idea.

Nerby, whose version of Facebook went viral earlier this year, has turned his attention to the 140 character or less social network and the results are pretty damn spectacular.

The design isn’t just a re-tooling of the social network to make it look a little prettier either. Nerby’s actually thought about what would make Twitter better and how to push real engagement on the platform.

Twitter Concept. A Digital Experience from Fred Nerby on Vimeo.

“By bringing conversations and data to life you’re creating engagement and the excitement to explore further turns in to an experience,” Nerby says in the design’s description.

So what’s changed? Well for one thing, Nerby seems to have figured out how to actually make Twitter music viable. Searching an artist for instance would allow you to see their photos and Vine videos. And if you click on their profile page, you’ll be able to see who they’ve been talking to as well as the number of tweets they’ve sent out around a specific topic.

You’ll also be able to see any tweets they’ve favourited and the latest music posted by the artist.

By the looks of things, Nerby’s not a big fan of the current Direct Messaging system either. He’s re-tooled that so you can send messages with a subject line and content of a lot more than a 140 characters.

We can understand that frustration, although the general workaround has been to ask the person you’re DMing for their email address, somewhere that long, detailed messages are much more at home.

Perhaps the most striking change though is the ability for users to pin tweets on a personal board. Sure, it’s obviously something borrowed from sites like Pinterest, but Nerby’s design makes the feature look a hell of a lot better than it does on any other site.

While we’re on the topic of visually stunning, Derby’s representation of data in his conceptual redesign is pretty cool too. And while it may seem like something designed purely for numbers geeks, it could actually help make the social network seem less like an echo chamber and, with the right tools, could provide a far more accurate assessment of the sentiment on Twitter than anything immediately available to the public right now.

According to Derby, the concept is based on “the classic ‘Rabbit Hole effect’ where you can stumble upon information that leads you deeper in to a digital experience and that opens up new doors for more content, insight and knowledge for the topic of interest”.