As
the attacks in Paris were still unfolding on Friday night, social media
sites lit up as sources for information that went beyond the news.
Facebook activated its Safety Check
tool, which allows users in an area affected by a crisis to mark
themselves or others as safe. Facebook created the tool to help in times
of crisis, a spokeswoman, Anna Richardson White, said on Saturday, and
it has activated it five times in the last year after natural disasters.
But this was the first time it was activated for something like this,
she said.
“People
turn to Facebook to check on loved ones and get updates, which is why
we created Safety Check and why we have activated it for people in
Paris,” Ms. White said.
She said she did not have numbers to show how many people had used the tool, and people were still using it on Saturday.
Facebook is also making a profile picture frame
available globally on its official page. “We’re offering our community
the chance to change their profile pictures to show support for France
and the people of Paris,” Ms. White said.Twitter, at the same time, put its new Moments tool to use, highlighting top news tweets about the attacks, as well as the prayers and good wishes posted by celebrities around the world, from the actresses Salma Hayek and Emma Watson to the presidential candidates Donald Trump and Hillary Rodham Clinton.
Twitter
quickly turned into a message board on Friday night with information to
help people in Paris get to safety. The hashtag #PorteOuverte — “open
door” — became a vehicle for offering shelter to those in Paris who
needed it. A Twitter spokesman, Christopher Abboud, said on Saturday
that there were one million tweets with the hashtag in 10 hours.
The
hashtag #prayforparis, the spokesman said, was even more popular, with
6.7 million posts in 10 hours. And the hashtag #StrandedInUS gained a lot of traction in the United States to help French people whose flights had been canceled.
The hashtag #RechercheParis,
Mr. Abboud said, accompanied descriptions of loved ones and requests
for information, and it was used to share news when someone who had been
sought was found alive. He said there were a million tweets with the
hashtag within 24 hours.
As the night wore on, posts on Twitter and Facebook that were not about Paris seemed out of place.
edited from The New York Times
