Sandwiched between your friendship requests and your poke from that creepy guy down the hall, you may find something a little more ominous.
 

Colleges like University of Maryland and UCLA are working on projects that use Facebook and MySpace to keep students in the loop when it comes to emergencies.
 

The Chronicle of Higher Education explains:

Colleges are experimenting with Facebook and other social networks to notify students about emergencies like crimes and floods—and get vital information in return. Most emergency-alert systems send out warnings. But social networks give students a chance to add on-the-scene reports or trade information if trouble hits. In addition to cell-phone and e-mail alerts, the social networks also give colleges yet another way to reach students in a crisis.

One concern is that people could make false reports to the emergency system. But Mr. Wu said that the system, called a community-response grid, would be self-correcting. "If I'm saying that I heard a gunshot near the stadium at a certain time," but there wasn't any such activity, Mr. Wu said, "then other students would come up and say 'I was there at the same time and I didn't hear anything.'"

Great...
 

Now thanks to these new status alerts, “were there or weren’t there gunshots” will be the new “are they or aren’t they dating.”