While Starbucks has been making strides with its social media activity its rival, and number two UK coffee chain, Costa Coffee has been nowhere to be seen — on Twitter at least.

Costa Coffee opened a Twitter (@CostaCoffee) account way back when in 2008 and tweeted….just the once.

It announced in October 2008 “We’ve finally arrived on Twitter!” and then nothing until yesterday.

It was a classic case of a brand setting up a Twitter account and then having no clue what to do next. Not one follow up tweet. There were so many things that it could have done from inviting people to share pics to tweeting their morning brew with competitions and what not.

In the intervening almost four years Starbucks in the UK has gone on to rack up more than 102,000 followers and make the Social Brands 100 list two years running, and made social media an increasingly big part of its marketing message — but then as it proved the other day with its Irish/British Jubilee gaffe it is still learning too.

Costa on the other hand has been silent. Yesterday it returned as part of a renewed effort by the brand to get to grips with social media.  It already has a substantial Facebook page, which has 588,000 fans, but it has more planned according to its post on Tumblr.

“In recent months, we’ve extended this commitment toFacebook, making it THE place for fun coffee-related content and conversations.

Today, we’re proud to officially take our passion for coffee to two new
places: Twitter and tumblr. Most importantly, Twitter is about you, our customers. Please tell us what you’d like to see from us an we’ll try to make it as
enjoyable as a cup of our famous coffee.

It will be interesting to see what it does with its @CostaCoffee Twitter account, it says it has ” lots of fun stuff in the pipeline”, and whether it develop its return into something significant.