Milk Carton 2.0 enlists social media users to help find missing kids

TORONTO – Backers of a technology billed as the 21st century version of the milk carton are trying to get more Canadians to sign up to receive information designed to help locate missing children.

Milk Carton 2.0 was developed by Grey Canada and allows participants and their social networks to spread the word about missing children in their geographic area.

By registering for Milk Carton 2.0 (www.valuableproject.ca), participants authorize the Missing Children Society of Canada to post Amber Alerts to their social media accounts — Facebook, Twitter or Foursquare.

The alerts will only be posted when a child in the region they’ve signed up for goes missing, and the society says there’s no spam, no newsletter or anything that will require filtering.

At this point, both Quebec and Alberta have more sign-ups than Ontario, but users can select an option for all of Canada or regions instead of a specific province.

Grey Canada says if a child’s information was sent to all of its current users, it would have a potential reach of more than one million people, and millions more if those people share the information.