Facebook’s Crisis Response now lets people share first-person accounts from disaster zones

Facebook today announced an update to its Crisis Response feature that expands the tool from simply allowing you to mark yourself as safe to sharing a bit more information about what’s happening on the ground. Facebook also today noted that it has activated the Safety Check feature, which launched back in 2014 and which is part of the overall set of Crisis Response tools, more than 1,000 times.

These new first-person accounts will allow users to share information about road blockages, fires, flooding, electricity outages and other dangers during a disaster.

In addition to this, Facebook is also launching an update to its existing blood donation program. The company is launching a new hub today that will make it easier for clinics, blood banks and donors to find each other. Using this tool, blood banks can notify potential donors (who can share their blood type) of a blood shortage, for example, and steer them toward their location.

This is an expansion to the existing “Blood donations on Facebook” service now live in India, Bangladesh and Pakistan; so far, more than 8 million people have signed up for the service.

Update: An earlier version of this story claimed the first-person accounts were part of the Safety Check tool. They are part of the larger Crisis Response feature. We have updated the post to reflect that. 

Contributer : Social – TechCrunch