But brands like Audi and celebrities like Justin Beiber have joined Instagram to promote themselves.

FORBES: Facebook Buys Instagram For $1 Billion: Mobile Is The Future

Stockbrokers have joined the fray, falling over themselves to justify the recent market rise and why it will continue.

FORBES: Is The Market Topping Out?

The new system is intended to encourage children to find out more for themselves by offering "joined-up" lessons rather than the traditional separation between subjects.

BBC: Row over plans for new curriculum in Scotland

Many have joined grass-roots groups measuring products themselves for signs of radiation levels.

WSJ: Radioactive Traces Found in Japan Baby Formula

Three astronauts, mission commander Jim Lovell, Fred Haise, and Jack Swigert, found themselves rocketing around the moon in a pair of joined vehicles, each with the interior space of a VW Beetle, almost no power, and no heat.

FORBES: Apollo 13: Lessons From the Successful Failure

Lafferty joined Weiss in being cautioned for dissent and Rangers invited pressure onto themselves by sitting off the play in the closing stages.

BBC: Rangers forward Kyle Lafferty

So he joined the team and found out that his teammates led fairly normal lives: Some lived by themselves.

CNN: Wheelchair rugby puts athletes back on the team

That said, for five years now I have kicked off the New Year by taking a plunge in the icy waters of New York's Coney Island, a tradition I was introduced to while living in Dublin, where I joined hundreds of locals who make an annual Christmas leap from a rock at Sandycove and baptize themselves in the freezing Irish Sea.

BBC: This is Snow & Skiing week

"I think many find the idea of committing themselves to one party for life a bit scary, " says Jonathan Isaby, who recently joined the Taxpayers Alliance pressure group as its political director.

BBC: Can UK political parties be saved from extinction?