Nearly every key Google product has its very own Twitter account. Google Drive, Android, the Nexus program, even Google Glass all have their own Twitter accounts to keep fans up to date on product news, tips and tricks, and occasional random foolishness. Even Google+ — the social network, community, and photo-sharing space that’s never quite caught on in the way the company hoped for — has its own Twitter account. An account that has lay dormant for the nearly four years that have gone by since Google+ launched. Until today.
Suddenly, the Google+ Twitter account has come alive, asking the “Twitterverse” to give some love for its #firstTweet. There are also a bunch of individual replies to Twitter users, each containing a GIF. It’s not a bad strategy — no one’s going to get mad at a corporate Twitter account for throwing some GIFs your way.
But why now? There’s been very little news on the Google+ front in the year since Vic Gundotra, the former VP in charge of the service, left the company. Most of the news has focused on the still-excellent Google+ photos service, with rumors swirling that the company plans to break it out into a separate product outside the Google+ umbrella. Indeed, earlier this year Google split up leadership for three products that formerly fell under Google+: “streams” (the social experience of Google+), photos, and the Hangouts communication tool.
That hasn’t led to any major user-facing changes just yet — but with the Google I/O developer conference less than a month away, we could learn a lot more about the future of Google+ before long. It’s possible that this newly active Twitter stream could be a sign that Google will put some focus back on the service this year.
Or, it could just be a tweet.
theverge.com, Saturday, May 02, 2015