Facebook taps blood donors

Given that a good many of the groups that spring up on Facebook are of dubious motivation - one thinks of 'Let's go out and panic buy carrots', whose founder exhorts: 'If we all do this, we can make this global shortage of carrots happen!' - it's encouraging that the odd socially-minded application flourishes too.

A charity based in New York has set up a group which aims to improve the co-ordination of blood donation by sending out messages to donors in the event of shortages and encouraging a greater level of donation overall.

Takes All Types collates information about what type blood type is needed in which area, and sends out alerts to Facebook users who may be suitable to donate. It also sends reminders about regular donations.

"We were reacting to our sense that most of what was on Facebook was too academic or frivolous," said Ben Bergman, a New-York-based recruiter who set up the service and found that it immediately attracted the interest of hospitals and blood banks.

Facebook, which now has 38.5 million users worldwide, is widely recognised to be a platform with huge potential, and has been used by everybody from the US Presidential candidates to children's charities to promote an agenda.

But it is groups of a more inconsequential nature, such as the 'I'd go out of my way to step on that crunchy looking leaf', whose 138,299 members enjoy news updates like 'Guess what? Fall is here!', that tend to be the most popular.

The National Blood Service (NBS), which co-ordinates blood donation in the UK, said it didn't have any immediate plans to introduce a similar service, and that it preferred to contact donors by phone in the event of emergency.

"Our donor records are protected by confidentiality agreements so these types of services, where information may be stored online, need to be treated with caution," a spokeswoman for the NBS said. "Generally if we need to contact a donor, we'll generally do so with a letter, but we also phone and text messages."

The UK has about 1.5 million blook donors, who make just under 2 million donations a year. Only 4 per cent of the population who can give blood actually do, according to the NBS.

Comments

[Mark Vickery]

ANYTHING that will increase the amount of blood or organs donated is a good thing.