Facebook – mass messaging in a crisis

I may be late to the party, but I recently saw that Facebook had implemented a feature allowing someone to mark themselves as safe during a disaster or crisis.

When disasters happen, people need to know their loved ones are safe. It’s moments like this that being able to connect really matters.

Mark Zuckerberg

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It’s great to see a social network with such massive influence creating a way of surfacing important content without the user having to go and search for it.
Some users in disaster-hit areas might be inundated with questions from friends asking if they are ok.

Some users might see that there has been a disaster in an area where a friend or associate lives but may not have a close enough relationship that they feel that they should initiate a personal message to check. However, their voyeuristic side might mean they are still interested in finding the answer.

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The safety page would allow any friend to quickly check which of their friends has marked themselves as safe and reach out to any that haven’t if they so desire.

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