geekosystem

Brands are everywhere on social media these days. They're creeping in from all sides, and you're just as likely to see an advertisement from, say, Taco Bell as you are your buddy's status update. It's the nature of the beast. That being said, there are a few instances where we'd like to see even more from these kind of pages. Take GE's Instagram page, for example. It's basically gadget and tech porn -- especially if you're a fan of engines -- at its finest. We've collected our 11 favorite images and included them below, so you don't have to take our word for it.

Social media did some things right during the hunt for the Boston Marathon bombing suspects. They also got plenty wrong, misidentifying suspects and throwing around the names of people who ended up having nothing to do with the bombing as suspects. No doubt well-meaning detectives on Reddit and 4chan misidentified the suspects so convincingly, though, that some traditional media outlets -- most notably The New York Post -- ran with the story. One of the consequences of this amateur detective work was that once they were sure that the Tsarnaev brothers were the men they were looking for, police released the photos in an effort to prevent further misidentifications and confusion.

The Boston Marathon suspects have been connected to Chechnya by pretty much every major news outlet at this point, and it's becoming increasingly clear that a good number of Americans have no idea where Chechnya is, among other things. In fact, it's gotten to the point where the ambassador of the Czech Republic felt the need to issue a statement informing the American people that, you know, the Czech Republic actually isn't Chechnya. Sigh.

A great many things were said on Twitter last night as the Boston-area manhunt wore on into the early morning. Lots of them were interesting. Many of them were true, and lots of folks on social media did kind of an amazing job covering it live in real time. Many of them, though, have ended up being more interesting than they were true in the cold light of day. I'd like to think there's a lesson in there about withholding things like names of suspects -- especially the names of oh, say, missing people whose families are worried about them -- until you're sure they're actually the names of suspects. I wonder if it will be.

Hate your job? Sure you do. There's no shame in it. We've all been there, and many of us, sadly, will stay there for some time. Always remember, though: There are plenty of perfectly appropriate places to voice your professional gripes. That's pretty much why offices even have bars near them, but new Twitter service FireMe! is an excellent reminder that "on Twitter" is not one of those places. The very existence of this service -- which automatically aggregates tweets from people who hate their jobs -- marks the beginning of the countdown to someone finding out they've been fired through a well-placed RT.

Pinterest is all about pinning things to other things, so with their newly launched redesign, they wanted to make it easier for users to find more pins to pin. The redesign was tested out on a handful of users in a closed beta, and will now begin rolling out to users via invite as early as today. So what can you expect from the new Pinterest? Pins. So. Many. Pins.

As humans, we tend to stay in groups, and those groups tend to be similar to us. We surround ourselves with people who look like us, act like us, or have similar interests as us. That behavior also follows us online, and a new study shows how we as humans break ourselves up into tribe-like groups on social media sites. That's not too surprising, but the study also looks at we do it, and that's fascinating.

We're not saying Pinterest is for the birds, but the social media platform definitely attracts a certain kind of material. If it's not cute pictures of animals, inventive uses for leftover cardboard boxes, or something to do with fashion, it probably doesn't belong on Pinterest. That said, someone over at NBC has totally figured out this social media thing. A recent Parks and Recreation episode saw Ben Wyatt and Leslie Knope tie the knot in their own haphazard way, and NBC put up a faux wedding album for the characters on Pinterest.

I don't think there is a rule in society that is both so universally agreed upon, but still ignored as not using a cell phone in a theater. Everyone hates it, but everyone does it at some point. At the WiredArts Fest, though, not only is cell phone use allowed -- it's downright encouraged. They want you tweeting about the shows, snapping pictures with Instagram, and even streaming the events from the comfort of your home. It's a new approach to the relationship between social media and theater, and it's one I'm kind of into.

Posterous is one of those social media startups that never seemed to find a specific place to call its own on the Internet. It's not like we don't already have Facebook, Twitter, and Pinterest, among others. That was before it was acquired by Twitter last March. After just over a year of pretty much doing nothing with Posterous, it's been revealed that Twitter will be shutting the service down on April 30th. All five people that were still using the service will surely be very distraught.

Sometimes letting the world know about your experiences on Twitter in 140 characters or less simply isn't enough to do it justice. You can attach a visual component such as a photo to the tweet, but at the end of the day it just seems to lack that spark of life, something only a video can accomplish. Those who'd rather film their meals instead of snapping a quick picture now have an option in the form of the Vine app. Recently acquired by Twitter, Vine Labs, Inc.'s latest product is a downloadable mobile service enabling users to film short video clips in six seconds or less -- adequate time to do something extremely irritating -- that plays on an infinite loop with sound once posted to Twitter. Still, what Vine Labs, Inc. is hailing as a social media breakthrough is essentially a glorified GIF, albeit an audible one.

Never in the history of the universe has there ever been something as contradictory as our equal love and outright hatred for social media, chief among them being Facebook. While Mark Zuckerberg's grand creation has enabled us to stay connected with friends and family no matter where they are in the world, we never stopped to consider the consequences of posting updates, photos, and other private information online. Those inclined to immediately post a series of photos highlighting a night of drunken escapades can only pray that no one saw what they did at Burger King at 3 in the morning. Thankfully, a recently released web app cleverly named FaceWash can help pull your sullied reputation out from the mud.

Hey, everyone, remember MySpace? No? That's OK, neither do we really. Kidding, kidding -- it was like a bus service or something, right? You know what? It doesn't matter, because everything you thought you knew about MySpace is about to change. The long-lost social networking platform released its redesigned site into the wild this week, buoyed (we guess?) by the new single from former teen heartthrob and current MySpace stockholder Justin Timberlake, seen above doing the best Morrissey impression he can muster. Because if there is one thing that is going to get us to offer up all of our personal data again to a social network we haven't thought about in years, it is a Justin Timberlake single.

You most likely remember your parents repeating the phrase over and over in the hopes that it would eventually embed itself in your adolescent minds: "Don't talk to strangers." Years later, it turns out their advice was taken to heart since Facebook is currently testing an initiative to charge users to message complete strangers outside their network -- though why'd you even want to do so prior to this change is beyond us -- that will set them back $100. The social media juggernaut is still deliberating over the exact price point, but regardless, contacting some random unknown who will most likely ignore your message seems like a quick way to throw money down the drain no matter the finalized cost.

Bits and pieces of theaters being sectioned off for smartphone usage isn't exactly a new idea, but it's still depressing whenever it crops up. Call me a purist, but my preference is to engage with the screen or cast as if there weren't another soul in attendance. As we increasing move towards an age where folks can't bear to be separated from the phones for even a few hours, it looks like I'll be increasingly in the minority. As another nail in that coffin, Guthrie Theater in Minneapolis, Minnesota began offering tweet seats this week so the audience can engage with the show via platforms like Twitter.