Have you ever wondered how social media platforms post on each others’ sites? It’s not something we might automatically think about, but over the weekend, Google Plus planted that thought firmly in our minds.

At The Practice, we have come to realise that the world of Google Plus is much lonelier than that of Facebook or Twitter, despite the platform claiming an active user base of 300 million per month. Regular activity and engagement on the site seems less apparent, and it is this observation which has led many to argue that its audience numbers have been vastly inflated. While we remember much interest surrounding its launch back in 2011, Google Plus never achieved the same level of popularity as its rivals, and even announced back in March that it planned to split to form two channels- one for photos, and one for streams. Moreover, while its parent company and affiliated products such as Google Drive and Google Glass have had active social presences for several years, Google Plus has barely made a dent.

Until now. As if emerging from the depths of hibernation, the platform decided to publish its first tweet, stating: “Hello Twitterverse! Can we get some love for our #firstTweet?” This certainly took the online community by surprise, who had presumed Google Plus had simply chosen to leave its Twitter account dormant. So why, we wondered, had the site decided to tweet now? After all that’s been happening between the evolving Twitter-Google partnership, perhaps this shouldn’t come as a surprising move. As we explored in a recent post, Google has now been granted access to Twitter’s “firehose” of tweets, allowing the company greater data insights, and enabling tweets to be shown in search results, offering visibility to logged-out users. The partnership between the two sites also means that Twitter benefits from having its advertisers’ promoted tweets return in search, while Google has access to a whole spectrum of instant news updates. But although we’re seeing the two companies align themselves with each other, Google Plus’s first tweet goes beyond this- we imagine it’s the site’s way of re-establishing itself on the platform it has grown closest to. It seems as though Google Plus has news- news of a new identity, and that Twitter will be the place to promote it.

With this in mind, we started thinking about how other social networks choose to use each others’ features and services. On Twitter, Facebook has an active account, publishing news and updates about itself- always with links to its own site. Pinterest does the same, with posts relating to topical pins, guides, and links to its blog. The platform also retweets tweets from visual Twitter accounts such as Vogue and Design Milk, in keeping with its own premise. On Facebook, Twitter posts links to its latest blog content, and updates about its own services and features. And since news is such a big part of Twitter’s identity, the site also uses Facebook to remind followers about current global events, and how they can follow conversations on the platform. There are also frequent factual posts on topics such as the most followed accounts in various categories, and which Twitter users are generating the most buzz at any given time. Pinterest uses Facebook in much the same way as on Twitter, with image-rich posts linking back to pins on its site. It’s also interesting to note that Google Plus isn’t active on Facebook either- but perhaps we might see a post now that it has decided to renew its Twitter presence? Either way, it’s clear that Google has new ideas for its social product, and we’re looking forward to seeing what emerges next.

Were you surprised to see Google Plus’s first tweet? Do you think we can expect to see a lot more of the site as a reinvented Google product? We’d love to hear your thoughts, so please tweet to us @PracticeDigital, and share your comments on our Facebook page.