Amber Alerts, which have helped find 525 missing children since their start in 1996, are coming to U.S. Facebook users. Facebook users in the 50 U.S. states, D.C., Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands can now sign up to receive Amber Alerts in their region.

The bulletins will be sent to their Facebook pages the same way they see updates from friends or businesses they like. Even before the creation of these pages, certain police departments already used the social network to push out notifications about AMBER Alerts.

Facebook, The U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ), and the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC) announced about this new partnership to spread the alerts. The Facebook AMBER Alert pages are part of an opt-in system, which means users will not receive banner notifications about AMBER alerts.

Early last month, the Virginia State Police posted an AMBER alert for 12-year-old Brittany Mae Smith and suspected abductor Jeffrey Easley on its Facebook page, after the girl’s mother was found murdered. The department kept updating its page with information about the case as it chased leads throughout the country, and days later, Smith and Easley were found alive in San Francisco after a woman recognized them. So, social networking matters a lot now-a-days.

AMBER Alert Program is named after Amber Hagerman, a nine-year old girl who was abducted while riding her bicycle on Jan. 13, 1996 in Arlington, Tex. Her abduction was covered by local news media on TV and on the radio, but her body was found in a drainage ditch four miles from her home four days after she went missing. The case still remains unsolved.

In reaction to this tragedy, the Dallas/Fort Worth Association of Radio Managers partnered with area law enforcement in 1997 to create the AMBER Alert program. AMBER stands for America’s Missing Broadcast Emergency Response. Currently, there is a network of more than 120 AMBER programs throughout the world. According to NCMEC, about 800,000 children are reported missing every year.

Via mashable