This is awesome. Lots of companies donate to charity, far fewer are in a position to directly build things - btw, that no one else can build - that make the world a far better place. I love it.

With over 650M DAU's on mobile, they're one of the few companies that can make a meaningful impact on day 1. Awesome to see Facebook invest in something that doesn't have direct monetary ROI (afaik). Cynics will say they're doing it for goodwill and branding but even if that's the primary motivation, let's appreciate it exists.

Facebook does seem like the perfect place for a product like this to exist

this is fantastic - congrats to @AhhSharon for spearheading this!

This is great, before clicking through (and not knowing this was a FB product) I was thinking, "well I would probably use Facebook to reach out"

Have been working on something similar over the last few months. Good to see that companies as big as Facebook see a need for this kind of product.

impressive

Pretty unbelievable that they didn't do this sooner to be honest

Data coverage is usually not available or overwhelmed in these scenarios. I think it would be more reliable for FB to send an SMS to the phone number you (may have) given them, where you could respond quickly with a Y or N, to conserve valuable cell tower resources in the area impacted.

this would have been great here in Egypt back in 2011. OK, good move from Fb. @zaccoffman that is what I thought it was at first. they should have added that as well!!?

Interesting that Facebook decided to not include something to notify that you aren't OK. 1 tap could notify distress as well as provide a quick location post of your location.