Wednesday, January 12, 2011

Facebook AMBER Alerts


Facebook has recently teamed up with the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children to create a series of state AMBER Alert fan pages. With Facebook's 500 million active users (with well over 100 million in the US alone) it's just one more way that such important broadcast system could reach a much more expansive audience. The company is donating 50 million advertising impressions to publicize the new system, and is making sure that the notices sent are only to those who have signed up to receive them in order to reach a more committed audience.

Do you think that the digitizing of such public programs/utilities will be a benefit or detriment? Do you think it will affect the audience reached in such a considerable manner as predicted? Or will there not be much of a difference in the exposure/participation the programs experience?

3 comments:

Unknown said...
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Unknown said...

I find this to be a very smart decision for the amber alert organization to do because facebook has a vast amount of people and they can get amber alerts out more to people on facebook. One thing i found weird was that they are putting a missing child organization on facebook, when in fact many abductions have started out because of facebook. it is just a coincidence that they decided to put amber alerts on facebook, but i find it to be a smart decision and hopefully it will help find missing children much easier.

Peter Zhan said...

I think that this will be a breakthrough for the amber alert system. Facebook is undoubtedly the best resource for searching information about people. I saw a documentary on Facebook one day detailing an adopted girl's search for her biological mother; she eventually found her mother through Facebook. That documentary also noted that police stations are already utilizing Facebook to solve crimes; in fact, many police stations already have their own Facebook pages. Facebook is a perfect match for amber alerts.