Are you ok? Let your Facebook friends know

Facebook wants us safe, yes. But also, even more connected.

Today Facebook has announced a new function which allows us to report we are safe when our area is hit by a natural disaster and attack or any other tragic event.

The feature is simple: if you live, or you are physically, is a dangerous are you will get from Facebook a push notifications asking if you are ok and yo let your friends know about it.

Safety check, this is the name of the new feature, after you have marked the safe status, will automatically notify to all your friends you are ok so they don’t have to worry about you.

Even if they don’t even care 🙂

These are the actions Safety Check will help you to do:

• Let friends and family know you’re safe
• Check on others in the affected area
• Mark your friends as safe

As you know, social media are a major and effective media channel to communicate with the entire world in case of disaster. Twitter, for example, has proved to be particularly effective in past during earthquakes, floods and other natural disasters.

Facebook has noticed it and now, wants us to use the social even when we are in danger. The main difference between the two social is that Twitter is more like a media, letting people know about a disaster in real-time, Facebook wants to be like a medium for friends and relatives. So, the first thing I am supposed to do in case of imminent danger is to notify “I’m safe” on Facebook?

Probably the first thing I’d do in that case would be simply call my relatives. 🙂

This new option highlight three major things:

1. Facebook always knows where we are (we already know it but this feature underline it)

2. We will use our phones to share we are in danger instead than call helps. 🙂

3. Facebook has another excuse to invite us to share our position if we have disabled it

Below the video: