Folks living in the UK, heads up. Twitter has launched an alert service in the UK that is meant for use during emergencies. Basically, anyone who has decided to sign up to Twitter Alert will be on the receiving end of messages from official organizations in case of an emergency. This particular Twitter Alert system will be able to send messages from organizations, where among them include police forces and the Environment Agency in the event of an emergency, to the people who have previously signed up for it.
The Twitter alert would be received as a text message, where it would also make an appearance over in one’s Twitter timeline accompanied by an orange bell. This particular service was mooted and worked upon right after the devastating Japanese tsunami a couple of years ago, where Twitter proved to be the communications tool of choice in locating information at time of the disaster. According to the Environment Agency, “We will only use Twitter Alerts to share urgent information about a significant risk to life or the environment as a result of flooding or an environmental incident.” I guess this alleviates any kind of concern that you might have about privacy issues and unwanted spam.
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