Facebook will now notify people of emergency situations via alerts. That includes notifying people of an active shooter situation and emergency weather.
Government agencies that will be able to control the alerts and send them via Facebook.
According to a blog post from Facebook , over the past year the emergency alert system has been tested on 350 local government Facebook pages.
Those sending out the alerts have the option to pick their target audience, narrowing the field down by Facebook users in a certain county, city, town or neighborhood where people live.
Facebook says they surveyed around 2,000 people who have seen posts marked as alerts while still in the testing phase. They say the results of that survey showed 73 percent reported the posts provided new information they had not seen anywhere else. Another 43 percent reported they took action based on the information they saw.
Users should automatically start seeing alerts from local first-responders and government agencies as long as they follow the page. Local governments can start signing up to be apart of the alert program now.
The alerts should be available to all Facebook users by the end of this year.
