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Facebook’s CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, announced a new addition to the Facebook’s life event button – you can now designate yourself as an organ donor. And, if you haven’t registered with the appropriate agency, there’s a link you can use to begin the process there as well. People immediately started asking me about privacy and how health officials will actually get the information. Both are good questions. For the 800 million Facebook users, just click the life event icon and follow the instructions. For everyone else, this is a great time to start thinking about what it means to make this kind of personal information public. Should everyone be able to see that you’re an organ donor, or just your family and the appropriate medical professionals? What if you want to do it, but you don’t have time to change the status on your driver’s license? The answer is, congratulations to Mark Zuckerberg and his team for using the power of Facebook to bring this important life-saving topic front and center.
About Shelly Palmer
Shelly Palmer is the Professor of Advanced Media in Residence at Syracuse University’s S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications and CEO of The Palmer Group, a consulting practice that helps Fortune 500 companies with AI strategy, implementation and governance, as well as technology, media and marketing. Named one of LinkedIn’s Top Voices in Technology, he is a bestselling author, covers tech and business for Fox 5’s Good Day New York, is a regular commentator on CNN, and writes the popular daily business blog Think About This. Follow @shellypalmer or visit shellypalmer.com.