Facebook, the world's largest social network, will update its Safety Check feature to give users descriptions about the disasters and let users send a note to their friends when they mark themselves as safe.
The feature is activated after natural disasters and major accidents, such as tsunamis or terrorist attacks. A push notification is triggered on devices that are near an affected area and users are asked to say if they need help or are fine.
Safety Check was activated in SA last week when a severe storm hit Cape Town in the Western Cape.
Facebook says Safety Check has been activated more than 600 times in the last two years and has notified people that their families and friends are safe more than a billion times.
Updates to the feature include the option to start a fundraiser for those affected by the disaster, expanding its Community Help service, the ability to add more context with a personal note, and a description of the crisis.
"Following a crisis, one way people give and request help is through fundraising. To make this easier, we are introducing Fundraisers in Safety Check. Within Safety Check, people will be able to create or donate to a fundraiser for charitable and personal causes to help those in need," says Naomi Gleit, Facebook VP for social good.
She says this will allow people outside of the crisis area to offer help. The feature will roll out in the next few weeks, initially only in the US.
Earlier this year, Facebook launched Community Help to make it easier for people affected by disasters to find each other locally to provide and receive help. This feature will be expanded from mobile to desktop.
To make it easier to share more context about the crisis, people can now add a personal note to tell their friends more about what is happening, from within the Safety Check tool.
Gleit says this note will appear in the news feed story that is automatically generated when people mark themselves as safe.
Users outside of the crisis zone will also now be able to read more about what happened from descriptions made available by Facebook's third-party global crisis reporting agency NC4.
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