Twitter Emergency Alert Service Launched In the UK And Ireland, Pushes 'Critical' Tweets To Users

Twitter has announced that its emergency alert service has arrived to the UK and Ireland. The microblogging site said these emergency alerts can help spread critical information from government organizations, emergency services and charities, especially when other means of communication are down. This service expansion comes two months after it was launched in the U.S., South Korea and Japan.

Currently, a total of 57 groups have already signed up to be a part of Twitter's alert service. These include the UK's 47 police force, the Mayor of London's office, the London Fire Brigade, Ireland's Gardaí police force and the Foreign Office, according to Steve Summers of Twitter.

Disaster, Emergency And Crisis Communications

"From today, these organizations will now be able to highlight critical information to their Twitter followers by marking Tweets as alerts, which highlight a Tweet with an orange bell for added visibility," Summers further said in a blog post.

"While participating organizations choose what information merits a Twitter Alerts designation, this feature is intended for crisis, disaster and emergency communications.

Commenting on the rollout of the service in the UK and Ireland, the Met Police's David Martin said, "Getting fast and accurate information to the public in a major incident or terrorist attack really could make a life-saving difference."

To sign up for the Twitter alerts, you need to visit the account page of the service that you wish to join. Also, to have the alert pushed to your smartphone as an SMS, simply enter your handset details on the next page. You must be aware that activating Twitter text messaging makes you searchable via your mobile number. However, you can disable this according to your preference in your account settings.

Furthermore, apart from landing as SMS, the notification will be pushed to users of Android and iOS devices and it will show up in your Twitter timeline with an orange bell beside the message.

All the organizations that joined the Twitter emergency alert service already have Twitter accounts. As such, the alerts made by Twitter users provide the authorities a way to highlight the critical tweets and get to them in super-fast time.