Missing People plans to use Twitter to find child runaways

IT | Kirsty Weakley | 24 May 2012

Missing People is hoping to track down missing children using Twitter, as well as raise awareness of its new missing people phone line.

As part of International Missing Children’s Day the charity will tweet an appeal every 30 minutes for 24 hours and encourage its followers to retweet.

The Big Tweet, as it is being called, also coincides with the launch of the charity's new hotline that people can phone and text when someone goes missing - 116 000 - and all the tweets on the day will include the hashtag #116000.

It is the second time the charity has run the online event and last year its tweets about missing children were retweeted more than 7,000 times with 15,000 people clicking through to the appeal pages.

However, the charity could not tell civilsociety.co.uk whether the campaign successfully found any missing kids.

Stephen Fry, a Missing People Patron and early adopter of Twitter, is supporting the appeal again.

The day will also see the launch of a new Missing Kids website, which the charity has worked in partnership with the Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre and the charity Parents of Abused Children to develop. It brings together online information about missing children and information about keeping children safe on the internet.

Directory: Missing People

Comments

[Cancel] | Reply to:

Name *

Email *

Organisation

Job Title

Comments *

Verification *

* Please read our Community Standards

Close »

Community Standards

The civilsociety.co.uk community and comments board is intended as a platform for informed and civilised debate.

We hope to encourage a broad range of views, however, there are standards that we expect commentators to uphold. We reserve the right to delete or amend any comments that do not adhere to these standards.

We welcome:

Robust but respectful debate
Strongly held opinions
Intelligent relevant discussion
The sharing of relevant experiences
New participants

We will not publish:

Rude, threatening, offensive, obscene or abusive language, or links to such material
Links to commercial organisations or spam postings. The comments board is not an advertising platform
The posting of contact details for yourself or others
Comments intended for malicious purpose or mindless abuse
Comments purporting to be from another person or organisation under false pretences
Gratuitous criticism, commentary or self-promotion
Any material which breaches copyright or privacy laws, or could be considered libellous
The use of the comments board for the pursuit or extension of personal disputes

Be aware:

Views expressed on the comments board are left at users’ discretion and are in no way views held or supported by Civil Society Media
Comments left by others may not be accurate, do not rely on them as fact
You may be misunderstood - sarcasm and humour can easily be taken out of context, try to be clear

Please:

Enjoy the opportunity to express your opinion and respect the right of others to express theirs
Confine your remarks to issues rather than personalities

Together we can keep our community a polite, respectful and intelligent platform for discussion.