Facebook’s Safety Check feature now offers ways to get or give help in times of crisis

Facebook’s Safety Check feature is pretty nice. It helps you quickly alert your friends when Facebook knows you’re in an area suffering through an immediate crisis, such as attacks or bad weather.

Now, it’ll also make it easier to let you make a difference. The app will prompt you with buttons for either finding help or giving it. Whether you need food, shelter, water, transportation, or what have you, you can request it or you can offer it.

Of course, those who are suffering an emergency will still need to be dialing their emergency phone numbers for immediate and dire assistance, but if you’re simply in a pinch due to the circumstances of your situation then this is a nice tool to help folks stay on their feet.

Facebook is also preaching safety when using this new feature. Considering it’s essentially a Craigslist for crises, you still need to be mindful of things like meeting in public places and trusting the person you eventually meet.

Facebook also stresses that this feature is only for situations brought upon by natural occurrences or accidental incidents. This is likely due to the dangerous nature of encouraging people to go into areas affected by an intentional attack, such as terror attacks. In those situations, follow the advice of your local authorities (which is usually to stay in your home).

This feature will be available in US, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Saudi Arabia, and India to start, with more being added over time.

[via Engadget]