Facebook ups the ante on organ donor awareness
May 3rd, 2012 Posted in Op/Ed, social networking, Transplant | No Comments »A couple of days ago, Facebook gave its base of 950 million users the ability to indicate that they are an organ donor. This, by itself could be fairly unremarkable, like many of the other features of the social network. What sets this apart then? The built-in ability for people to easily register as an official organ donor. Working with Donate Life, they provide a link to Donate Life’s Facebook app to select your region and then go out to Donate Life’s website and actually register. As the recipient of a liver transplant, this is big news, and I am grateful for anything that companies and people do to save a life – especially on the magnitude that Facebook just took on.
Unlike most of the silly “post this ….” awareness wall spam that circulate endlessly, this will actually do some good. Even If the national increase in donors is one half of one percent, that is still a job well done and lives will be saved. In fact, some 100,000 Facebookians signed up on the site on Tuesday alone, and according to David Fleming, chief executive of Donate Life America, this “dwarfs any past organ donation initiative.”
This simple thing that Mark and his crew have done raises awareness for the need for organ donors. In an interview Zuckerberg said he thought of it when his friend Steve jobs had his liver transplant. What’s really commendable here is that he could have done any number of things. Zuck’s a rich dude, he could have donated money and registered himself and been done with it. Nope. He decided to out the idea in front of the worlds largest online community and take steps to turn a website, in this instance Facebook, from one of the worlds largest time sucks into a platform to help people.
This doesn’t make Facebook a system of record for people to be listed as a viable donor, you will still have to actually register and not pull a classic jersey shore move by only wearing the wrist band, but it’s about raising awareness – and he certainly did that.
Good on you Mark….

The list of brands out there with an app has a lot of girth to it, and is growing faster than a snotty little girl who just ate the 3 course dinner piece of gum. Unfortunately, not all of them are doing something unique, usable, or even all that interesting, and ends up being another case of “just because you can, doesn’t mean you should.” The most successful apps serve a purpose, fill a void, are radically different than anything else (
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