Paris Attacks Push Facebook, Twitter Users to New Tools
Social-media companies FacebookInc. and Twitter Inc. provided new tools allowing people around the world to track and discuss the violent attacks in Paris on Friday with unprecedented speed and depth.
Facebook activated its “Safety Check” feature Friday, allowing the site’s users in the area of the attacks to mark themselves as safe on their profiles. This marked the first time the tool was enabled for violent attacks. Twitter’s news-curation tab, known as “Moments,” featured tweets, images and videos from news agencies and bystanders that showed snippets of the attacks’ aftermath.
ENLARGEOn Twitter, Parisians used the hashtag “#PorteOuverte”—or “open door” in French—to offer shelter to stranded visitors. Photo: Eric Thayer/Reuters
Alphabet Inc.’s Google said it is making international calls to France from its Hangouts mobile communication app free through the weekend, so people can check on the status of friends and relatives. The free calls can be made through Google’s Hangouts app on Android phones and iPhones.
On Twitter, Parisians used the hashtag “#PorteOuverte”—or “open door” in French—to offer shelter to stranded visitors. On Periscope, the live-streaming app owned by Twitter, a user posted a video of the scene around the Bataclan concert hall, the site of one of the attacks. Other users posted live videos of their reaction to the violence, often with police sirens blaring in the background.
“My thoughts are with everyone in Paris tonight,” Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg said on his Facebook page. “Violence like this has no place in any city or country in the world. We’ve activated Safety Check, so if you’re in Paris you can mark yourself safe or check on your friends and family.”
Facebook’s safety check tool been activated five times since its introduction in October 2014. The feature is activated by the company’s “social good” team, which is tasked with building features for Facebook that help people in crisis. The social network was spurred to develop the product after the 2011 earthquake and tsunami in Japan, Mr. Zuckerberg has said.
Facebook sends users who are detected in a crisis zone a message asking if they are safe. The users can then use the tool to indicate on their profiles that they are safe. Users can also mark others as safe or keep tabs on other Facebook connections in the affected area. The information is only visible within a user’s Facebook network.
Facebook first activated the tool on April 25 after a big earthquake hit west of Nepal’s capital, Kathmandu. More than seven million people in the area were marked safe, notifying more than 150 million people connected to them, Mr. Zuckerberg said in a later post.
Facebook turned it on again after a powerful quake struck Chile in September. The feature was also enabled twice in October, after Hurricane Patricia hit Mexico and when an earthquake shook Afghanistan, Pakistan and the surrounding region.
This year, Facebook and Twitter have invested in delivering real-time news to their users.
In June, Facebook’s photo-sharing app Instagram overhauled its “Explore” tab, making it easier for users to find images by place and hashtag. “People are hungry for what’s happening right now in the world,” Instagram CEO and co-founder Kevin Systrom told The Wall Street Journal at the time.
In October, Twitter unveiled “Moments,” a slimmed-down version of its own feed with tweets selected by a team of editors. That same month, Facebook said it has indexed more than two trillion posts across the social network so users can track news events as they unfold.
Write to Deepa Seetharaman at Deepa.Seetharaman@wsj.com
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