…but I’m failing.

If I want to contact people individually without meeting them, I telephone them, email them or text them. Occasionally I’ll add something to a Facebook page or reply to a Tweet. Even less often, I’ll write a letter, such as to the taxman this week—my third letter to anyone this year.

For group communication, I contribute to various forums several times a week. I have two blogs that squawk at Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn whenever I publish something new. Office Jotter also gets syndicated to a couple of aggregating services; its Twitter squawks go to the #socbiz list. I lob the occasional photo at my Flickr page.

That’s about the lot, so far as sending goes.

Incoming!

I get masses more stuff. That’s mainly through RSS feeds (120 of them on computer matters alone), Twitter, email lists, newsletters, alerts from Facebook, LinkedIn and Quora, and filtrates from Google and Dow Jones. I also visit my favourite general sites—the BBC and The Guardian—at least once a day each.

Being in the social networking business, I’m subscribed to dozens of online social systems that send me automated news releases and community messages. Other suppliers of software and services email me updates about their affairs via their PR and analyst relations people.

My online day is pretty full, in other words, whether I’m at my PC or using my BlackBerry telephone. (Being a one-man business, I have no need of in-company systems. Any enterprise networking I do is intracranial.)

And Google Plus?

Where do I squeeze Google Plus into that melange? What would it give me that I don’t get some other way?

Any contacts I set up, at least initially, would be scavenged from existing services. The groups seem to be made up of the same people I see elsewhere. Any topics would be those I keep an eye on already. I don’t see, as the saying goes, what it’s bringing to the party.

I am trying, believe me. I read well-intentioned digests like this – “5 Keys To Making Google Plus Work For You” – that give helpful advice about how to use it. They don’t say why I should, though. That’s what I need help with.

This is nothing against the company, by the way, if that’s what you might be thinking. Theirs is my standard Web search tool and I’ve been a busy user of Google Mail for nearly four years. I’m constantly travelling, so use Google Earth often. I had hopes for Wave. Etc., etc.

It’s just that, for me, Google Plus is Google Blah.

PS I feel the same about Gist. It’s clearly very clever but I see no personal value in it.