I swore this would be a vacation. It was so weird taking a cab to JFK and not asking for a receipt, but I was ready to embrace it. Still, a long Labor Day weekend in Los Angeles for a friend's wedding wound up being shaped continually by social media experiences with brands big and small. Here are some standouts.

Excuse me for being a little behind, as it happens, the Times, but I just got back from Ireland to discover that that very newspaper has decided it's time to kill Facebook, just because -- from what I can tell -- it's good to be out in front of trends and be the first to the funeral .

Now that augmented reality has established itself as the technology buzzword of the year, what impact will it have on social media?

As a follow-up to last week's post, here are ten things I dislike about social media, in no particular order.

One of the hardest jobs I ever had was working as a day camp counselor, spending eight summers straight at Beth El Summer Session in New Rochelle, NY. While it's been a few years since I wore a T-shirt and swimsuit to work every day, seeing all the kids home from camp swarming around Madison Square Park this week brought back a few memories. It also made me realize how relevant a lot of what I learned in that job is to what I'm doing now.