Totally Organic Assistance

I normally append the Privacy Stupidity tag on to just about any Facebook story (because Mark Zuckerberg owns the 64,000 ton Privacyosaurus in your family room and increasingly at your workplace) but every now and then the beastie learns a trick that really does help the planet out.

On Tuesday, Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg and chief operating officer Sheryl Sandberg released a joint statement announcing a new feature. Users in the U.S. and the U.K. can now add a new post to their Timelines, the individual chronological life histories on the website, indicating when they decided to register as an organ donor.

The new feature can be found in the “Life Event” tab at the top of a user’s profile page, located immediately below the “About” section.

After clicking “Life Event,” a user can choose between five categories. Clicking “Health and Wellness,” the user can see a list of options to add to their Timeline, and “Organ donor” is at the top. Clicking it, a user can choose to share with specific groups of Friends or the public at large that he or she has registered.

If a user isn’t yet a registered organ donor or would like to become one, Facebook has also attached a database to the tool directing users to their official local registry. 

Organ donor registrations were up Tuesday by 800% or so over normal.  I'm pretty sure that Facebook might be able to give such a movement legs.  If you do decide to become a donor on Facebook, make sure you've registered on your state's official registry too.  The Facebook organ donor page does have a link to the various state registries, so make it official, folks.

Pretty awesome, Facebook.  Pretty awesome.