I am bad at communication. Here is what I have observed:

I reply well when messages are short, informal and don’t require much structure or thought. Emails with some people are easy, if I feel like we are on the same wavelength, can speak briefly and to the point, use shorthand we both understand etc. I reply quickly to Sam, my podcast collaborator, with whom I have email exchanges like: “Saturday?” “Yep.” “7pm my time?” “Sure.” Twitter also fits into this category. Short, informal messages with an interface that works well on my phone are easy to reply to.

I don’t reply well to more in depth messages. It’s not that I have a problem with writing in sentences and thinking complex thoughts, it’s mostly a question of immediacy. I can knock out a quick email easily on my phone on the bus, or as a quick aside to the piece of work I am really doing on my computer. If I have to think about a reply, it goes on my to do pile, which is a strange and disturbing realm from which nothing returns. Emails sink down my inbox screen with alarming speed. Following recent unavailability, I have fallen far behind. Work days at the moment are a struggle with the most urgent work while my undealt-with email pile is fast approaching 1000. (Will it self destruct when it reaches four digits?) Having such a large, looming unknown in my life is quite disconcerting. I hope the quiet summer will give me time to catch up.

Of course, when an issue is too big for a tweet and a twitterer changes to email, they discover the forgotten realm of my inbox. If it was too big for a tweet, it is too big for a short, quick email and I’ve added it to the pile. (This isn’t deliberate, and I’m annoyed with myself about it. But, you see, if I don’t sort out this thing by tomorrow I’m going to miss that deadline…)

Where does Facebook fit? I find Facebook annoying. People send private messages which are basically like long emails but appear in a different place so I can’t reply so easily. I don’t find it as easy to quickly dip in and read something interesting, or engage with someone’s quick message because the web interface has more junk going on and the service doesn’t work so nicely on my phone. I’m fed up of meeting people and having conversations like: “You know my ?” “Really, wow, congratulations!” “What? But surely you knew? I did post it on my Facebook wall.” (Yes, really.) Originally I refused to sign up to Facebook and only did so once I started working for the IMA and we were starting a group. Now I no longer work in that sort of area, should I get off Facebook? I’m really tempted.

Into this picture steps Google+. Again I resisted the first attempts to get me on it but I’ve been using it for three weeks now. I sort of like it. I don’t have to worry about abbreviating myself to 140 characters like on Twitter but there is still an expectation of short, quick updates. I’m not constantly asked to play games and other stuff. And people can reply in a way that keeps the conversation together better than Twitter. Still, there’s something about it that isn’t quite clicking with me. It may be the lack of people on there, which will be fixed in time. I’m still not quite sure.

Looking for a place for Google+ in this mess of my online communications feels a bit like having a problem at one end and having a solution at the other and trying to fit the one to the other even though they don’t go together. Still, Christian Perfect suggested Google+ was a better place for conversations around the Math/Maths Podcast. I regularly ask on Twitter ‘What’s happened in your mathematical world this week?’ Christian is suggesting I could collect the replies more sensibly on Google+. Further than this, I wondered if I might put up one or two stories and see if anyone had any comments on them that I could collect that way.

So I’m going to give it a try. Take a look at this week’s messages on my Google+ page – one about The Code and maths communication, the other asking for news from your mathematical week. Now, I’m off to tweet that I put up a new blog post…