That’s what I’ve learned this morning by reading “Emergency Alerts via Facebook and MySpace Are New Ways to Reach Students,” an article written by Jeffrey Young from the Chronicle of Higher Education.
A group of researchers at the [University of Maryland at College Park] is also working to build a prototype of a homemade social network for the university’s Web site designed for use in emergency situations. The project is an outgrowth of work by Ben Shneiderman, a professor of computer science at the university, and Jennifer J. Preece, dean of the university’s College of Information Studies. They published an article in Science last year proposing that local governments develop social networks to supplement 911 emergency hotlines.
Mr. Shneiderman said he got the idea after typing “911” into Google and getting no useful results. “I said, “Something is wrong here—I think of the Web as my source of communication.”
Now a graduate student at Maryland, Philip Fei Wu, is building a prototype for university use. “We hope to create a platform to allow students to communicate, to exchange ideas, to comment on ideas” in an emergency, Mr. Wu said in an interview.
As I said in the comment I posted on Wired Campus, the Chronicle’s blog, I don’t think a social networking website designed to be used just for emergencies can do the job.
It makes sense to incorporate the features in the daily activities of its potential users, but they won’t probably remember to log in if something happens.
What do YOU think?