

Facebook releases 'Safety Check' - shoshin23
http://newsroom.fb.com/news/2014/10/introducing-safety-check/

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th3iedkid
Seems nice , but would be interesting to read more articles on :

>>When the tool is activated after a natural disaster

1)What all disasters count as natural disaster ?

>>and if you’re in the affected area,

2)how does FB get data on radius of affected regions all over the world?Or how
is affected region measured for each type of disaster

>> you’ll receive a Facebook notification asking if you’re safe.

3)Priorities in times of disaster and connectivity questions .Lets say
connectivity is disrupted and even if the person is safe ,b/c he/she did not
respond to notification would it mark that person as unsafe or unknown ?

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weavie
So what if you aren't safe? There doesn't seem to be an option for "nope I'm
in serious trouble here. Help me out."

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bradleyland
A person's response to an emergency situation isn't symmetric in the case of
safe/unsafe. If you _aren 't_ safe, you should either be on the phone with
emergency services (911 here in the states), or someone who can help you
directly. Facebook isn't the appropriate conduit through which you should
communicate. That's why you don't see a "I'm in trouble" option. Facebook
doesn't want to present themselves as a means to send distress messages.

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xxbondsxx
Bradley hit the nail on the head -- we display a localized emergency services
number in the Safety Check UI in case anyone needs to contact the actual
authorities. We're not a conduit for life-or-death information like that
(which is better handled by the government).

Source: engineer on the project

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ddmf
I think this is actually a rather good feature, although it does mean that
there is more of a need to check facebook when a disaster is occurring... ad
infinitum

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jbrooksuk
It's a win-win situation.

\- Users know that their families are safe.

\- Facebook gets more user time.

Everyone wins.

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wooh
This is a pretty great idea. I have a lot of friends in Japan and it could be
pretty handy in case of a tsunami or taifun.

