Technology Bits: Social Media Curation through Milq and a Mayor Uses Instagram

Social Media Curation through Milq

Overwhelmed by the disarray of social media? Looking for some way to make sense of the mess? Help may be on the way. Ben Sisario of the New York Times reports on the beta release of Milq:

How can users separate the essential content from the utterly disposable? How can they intelligently organize and share the most interesting of the media ephemera flying past them constantly on Facebook, Twitter and Tumblr?

The people behind Milq, a new website and app, say they have one solution: change the network. Milq, which is making its debut on Monday after more than a year in beta form, lets users organize songs, video clips and other bits of media around common themes, resulting in something like collaborative mixtapes.

“The ingredients are all there for a golden age of curation, but it’s not,” said Don MacKinnon, one of the three founders. “It feels like a cacophony of one-off posts. Milq is designed to create a better structure of a network to take it from a cacophony to somewhere you can find the best stuff.”

Looks interesting, even if it’s just one small step in the direction of making social media more useful and less stresful.

A Mayor Uses Photos and Instagram to Share His Vision and Build Community

Adam Nagourney of the Times reports on Eric Garcetti, the 43-year-old major of Los Angeles, who is taking lots of photos during his workday and posting them on Instagram:

Mr. Garcetti’s endeavor is at once political and personal, offering a glimpse into the subdued and slightly offbeat style that has come to define this city’s new leader. It is a style that, with every passing day, offers more of a head-snapping contrast to the splashy and showy ways of his immediate predecessor, Antonio R. Villaraigosa. The days of red carpet appearances, brash promises and bad-boy mayoral antics have given way to a mayor who grows animated talking about the pressing need for navigational systems on fire trucks — and who likes taking pictures with his Samsung Galaxy S4 phone from the behind-the-security-line vantage point that comes with his job.

The fact that Garcetti has a good eye for photography doesn’t hurt. But I wonder if he’s finding a new way to share his vision, both literally and figuratively, for the city of Los Angeles. Moreover, using photos in this way may be a way to build community as well as to enhance Garcetti’s role as mayor.

Are there implications here for other leaders? For example, how might pastors follow Garcetti’s example? What might happen in their churches and relationships?