Where To Add Organ Donor Info on Facebook

I read today that Facebook is encouraging organ donations.  I think this is a great effort and more people should be organ donors.  Ultimately I want this campaign to be successful (and it looks like it is) , but I do have a few concerns:

1. This feature is kind of hidden away.  In fact, I didn’t realize the amount of “Timeline Life Events” I could indicate until I started writing this.  This speaks to a larger problem Facebook has with rolling out new site changes without really communicating to their end-users that it’s happened. See the blog post photo to help with finding this feature’s location.
2. Life Event or Ease of Use? Part of the challenge in organ donations is that it makes us confront our mortality.  I’m not sure Facebook, with its real-time & past timeline focus, changes that mindset. Being an organ donor is kind of like the ultimate bucket list item – one day you’re gonna go and hopefully save some lives when it happens – but does that energy exist as a “life event” when you sign up?  Is it easy for me to just “like” that someone is a donor, but not do it myself or declare that I am one?  Is the campaign’s success hinged on it being a “life event” or that it’s just easier for people to sign up since usually we’re asked to make this decision only every few years with our driver’s license renewals?
3. Other Life Saving But Less Mortality Confronting Campaigns. Why not start with something life-saving that is also giving…while you’re still living?
1. Bone Marrow: Why not start a campaign for more people to register as Bone Marrow Donors?  Bone marrow donors require a genetic match and the more people who register, the more likely it is that a person who is suffering from life-threatening diseases like cancer can find a match.
2. Blood Donations: Why isn’t Giving Blood a life event? According to the Red Cross, “currently only 3 out of every 100 people in America donate blood” and “1 pint of blood can save up to 3 lives.”  And if you donate platelets, one donation can be worth 3 single doses for 3 patients – the equivalent of 12-18 whole blood donations.

So, I hid it. 

Here’s how (until they do their next interface change tomorrow or something…):

Click on the ‘”Gearwork” (I think?) symbol and there’s a “Hide Sidebar” option. 

Fair warning: some friends have expressed that this might be a little buggy as sometimes they see it when they log back in.  I’m assuming this has to do with mass roll out of this feature.

-cct

Facebook Shifting Borders?

The other day my friend Ian and I were having a facebook wall conversation and it wasn’t until he commented on my message on his wall that I realized you could comment on that as well (hey…there’s some things I don’t pay attention to ).

As my friend Bobby just did the same thing earlier (commenting on my wall post), I write this post being all kinds of  divided.  Is this the end of the wall-to-wall?  It makes sense because then the conversation follows on your profile where it began and you can see the exchange of things.  But then, I feel that you miss that element of two people on different profiles talking to each other.

Twitter-like?

Is this another Twitter-like integration by facebook as well?  Essentially adding in comments to people’s wall posts allows for other people to make their own comments if they knew the person.  I’ve done this on twitter every once in awhile, but though I’ll occasionally throw in a “I don’t know you, but that’s awesome!” comment in a string related to a facebook status, I haven’t really felt the need to do it in facebook.  Or perhaps it’s because I’ve never had the option?

Facebook with Twitterish Features

I’ve not been too big a fan of Facebook’s obvious changes to deflect the Twitter craze, but obviously (sans the Facebook Governance), they are a business and they need to figure out how to combat the competition.  But as individual tools, I see Facebook and Twitter as not different players in the same game (“Social Media”), but rather different dialects of the same language.  Some of its changes, it’s as if Facebook is trying to forcibly integrate another dialect into its own…and well – it’s awkward.  Twitter’s recent changes to interface are more about how to improve itself for its users and I think that’s how it really should be.

Commenting on wall posts, however, I think is just another facebook habit this user has to acquire.

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Screenshot - Facebook TOS Voting

Well…sort of efficient. When I tried voting the first couple of times I received all these error messages. In any case, if you haven’t heard voting has now begun for the new Terms of Service (TOS) on Facebook – revised version with an input of comments from users and experts or reverting back to the 9/08 version before the mass hysteria of libertarian-esque outcry (It’s the internet. We’re still the wild, wild west).

Go here to get to the vote.

Way more efficient than Mark Zuckerberg’s inefficient FB blog post.

The vote ends April 22nd 11:59 a.m. PDT on April 23.