Saving Lives through Social Media

Now just about anyone with a Facebook account can save lives with a simple click of a mouse. This week, Facebook announced a life-saving addition to its Timeline feature, giving its members in the U.S. and the U.K. the option to share their organ donor status with friends. Through the tool, users can sign up as organ, eye and tissue donors, find quick access to their state’s donor registry and post videos related to the cause.

Facebook’s effort to publicize and unite possible donors and recipients through member statuses is just the latest example of how the company is leveraging its fan-base to create social change. It seems that Facebook has broadened its initial purpose of simply connecting people, moreover giving them the freedom to become catalysts for solving important issues, with the ability to spread information at light speed.

Facebook has become one of the greatest tools for the mobilization of friends and group organizations to spark conversations and take action towards issues they feel strongly about. It’s a vehicle to get people talking about or uniting on things they may had never known or spoken about otherwise.

The whole idea comes down to 3 simple steps:

“We never could have anticipated that what started as a small network would evolve into such a powerful tool for communication and problem solving,” said Zuckerberg and Sandberg in a joint statement.” As this happens, we hope to build tools that help people transform the way we all solve worldwide social problems.

With bullying being such a huge issue today, the company recently issued online prevention tools, such as Safety Center upgrades, downloadable and sharable content, videos and community resources to prevent cyber bullying. Additionally, back in December, the company launched the Lifeline feature, which allows people to alert Facebook if they feel one of their friends has expressed thoughts of suicide or self harm. From there, the company will issue an email with information including a telephone hotline and a link to a confidential online chat resource.

With adoptions of these programs still in the early stages, it remains to be seen what the overall success rate of each will be. It’s possible that a significant impact could be seen over the next couple of years; at least we can hope for this. One thing is for certain; that the possibilities as to what other types of issues Facebook could begin to help solve are endless.

When it comes to our business, work with non-profit organizations comes to mind. Imagine all the ways we could begin to help. Maybe Facebook too.