Facebook’s New “Safety Check” Feature Lets You Tell Friends And Family You’re Okay After A Major Disaster
With over 1.3 billion users connected to its network on a monthly
basis, Facebook is able to leverage its massive scale for good. It’s put
those capabilities to use in the past to encourage users to vote or register to be an organ donor, but today the company announced something applicable to an even broader audience: Safety Check, a new feature that lets you tell your family and friends that you’re safe in the wake of a natural disaster or other crisis.
During these critical times, people to turn Facebook’s service to
check on loved ones and get updates, Facebook explains in an
announcement of the new feature out this morning,
“It is in these moments that communication is most critical both for
people in the affected areas and for their friends and families anxious
for news,” says Facebook. “We want to provide a helpful tool that people
can use when major disasters strike, so we’ve created Safety Check – a
simple and easy way to say you’re safe and check on others.”
During the major disaster, Safety Check will let your family and
friends know you’re safe as well as let you mark your friends as safe.
This information will be shared with other friends and family checking
on their loved ones who are in the affected area. And only your Facebook
friends will see your current “safety status” and the comments you
share.
Facebook says the idea for Safety Check grew out of its experiences
designing a product to help its users in Japan following the 2011
earthquake and tsunami, which affected 12.5 million people nationwide
and led to over 400,000 evacuations. At that time, Facebook engineers in
Japan rolled out the “Disaster Message Board” to make it easier for
those involved in the situation to communicate with other friends and
family. The engineers then launched a test of the tool the next year and
“the response was overwhelming,” says Facebook.
That
Disaster Message Board has now evolved into what’s now being called
Safety Check, and it will soon be available to users worldwide on the
desktop, iOS, Android and even feature phones.
The way the product works is that it alerts users in the affected
area, asking them if they are safe via a notification. (Facebook will
determine your location by what’s listed in your profile, or if you’ve
opted into its “Nearby Friends” product, it will look at your last
location. It will also look at the city where you are using the
Internet.) If for some reason, it gets this information wrong, you can
tell Facebook you’re outside the affected area.
Then, marking that you’re safe is as simple as tapping the the green
button which says “I’m Safe” and a notification and News Feed story will
be posted to your profile. Friends can also mark you as safe on your
behalf, in case you’re with a group of people who are handling this
function for others.
Those who receive the notifications about friends’ safety statuses
will be able to tap onto the alerts and go into the Safety Check section
to see a list of updates.
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