What if someone you like just disappeared? Using a browser extension + Facebook we managed to make people care about a problem they would normally ignore.

Every 5 seconds, a person disappears in the world, leaving thousands of families devastated. However, unless someone dear is involved, people normally ignore this problem. And even when they care about it, it’s hard to know how to help.

The NGO Mães da Sé struggles to reduce this number, trying to turn the cause of some, into the cause of many. With that in mind, we had to make people care about this problem. But we also had to give them a way to help.

The best way to achieve both objectives was to put people in the shoes of the families that actually have lost someone.

By doing that, we could get their attention. Then, letting them share the message along with a real missing person photo, we gave them an easy way to help. And, when the message was shared, all their friends were also impacted. A real high improvement on the odds of searching someone.

We installed this plug-in in more than 35.000 computers, impacting more than 1.000.000 people directly. This generated more than 10.000 shares. But the best of it all is that we turned hundreds of unknown faces into known faces. And, even though the search is still difficult, we significantly raised the number of people aware of the problem.

We created a browser extension that affects people’s Facebook. This add-on was installed in computer labs of the largest university in Brazil (35.000 computers). When someone logged in Facebook, the plugin was automatically enabled.

When people were checking their timelines, their friends started to vanish, leaving a blank space. If they tried to search for the missing friend through the search, the same happened. Suddenly, it became impossible to contact the missing friend and, when the blank spaces were clicked, the message was revealed.

After the surprise, they could share the message along with a face from a missing person. In each post on Facebook, these unknown faces reached thousands of people, raising the chances of identifying someone.

We managed to make people feel the strange sensation of losing someone dear to them at the same time that we allowed them to help by sharing the faces of people that were actually missing.

We installed this plug-in in more than 35.000 computers, impacting more than 1.000.000 people directly. This generated more than 10.000 shares. But the best of it all is that we turned hundreds of unknown faces into known faces.

And, even though the search is still difficult, we are sure that the odds of finding someone were highly improved.