Facebook announced this morning that they are going to use the power of their expansive social network (161 million members in the US) to help out in the social struggle for organ donors.  Approximately 18 people a day (7,000 each year) in the United States die waiting for an organ transplant.  Last year, members took it upon themselves to use Facebook for the greater good, helping to find lost items in the Joplin, MO tornadoes and to locate missing loved ones in the 2011 tsunami in Japan.

Now Facebook users have the ability add their donor status, right where they already list basic details like their birthday or hometown along with when they made this decision and why.  The goal is to encourage others within your social network to register themselves as donors through a local online registry like Donate Life America or through the DMV.   Zuckerberg credits his girlfriend, who is in medical school to be a pediatrician, along with the recent loss of friend Steve Jobs who received a liver transplant back in 2009, as the two main reasons for this initiative.

Want to learn more?  Watch the ABC News interview with Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg here.

For those of you in the medical field (hopefully rocking your UA scrubs), what do you think of this latest Facebook venture?