Facebook has announced that it is adding a feature called ‘Safety Check‘ to help users let their loved ones and friends know about their health and whereabouts during a natural disaster.
The 2011 earthquake and tsunami in Japan was devastating. According to the Japanese Red Cross, more than 12.5 million people were affected nationwide, and more than 400,000 people were evacuated. During that crisis we saw how people used technology and social media to stay connected with those they cared about.
Facebook will send a push notification to users within an affected area asking them if they are ok, when users respond, they are then added to the “safe” list. Once this is done, a notification will appear in their friends feeds.
Users will also have access to the Safety Check dashboard where they can see which of their friends are in the same area and how many of them have marked themselves as safe on Facebook.
Safety Check will be available on the Web interface, iOS, and Android.
Hopefull no one needs to use this service, but it’s a good initiative from Facebook.
Check out more details on Facebook’s blog here.
