With the objective of contributing its bit towards reducing the number of people who die waiting for organ transplants, social networking giant Facebook revealed on Tuesday that it intends allowing its members to use their personal pages to express their desire to be organ donors.

About the move, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg and the social network’s Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg said in a blog post that, similar to the way the Facebook users enter information about their hometown or alma mater, they would also be able to add donor plans to their personal profiles.

In addition, the company also revealed that Facebook pages will also feature a link to an official donor registry.

However, since Facebook would not have any force of law behind it, authorities have clarified that putting organ donation-related information on Facebook pages will not mark a replacement for the formal requirement of getting oneself registered with existing state donor registries, either by going online or by visiting driver’s licensing bureaus.

As such, even though Facebook will simply be spreading the word about organ donations via the ‘social encouraging’ move, Ryan Taylor - a transplant hepatologist at the University of Kansas Hospital – said that the attempt is still “a really tremendous breakthrough.”

Further drawing attention to the fact that the authorities may reach a point where “donor awareness can plateau,” Taylor said that the “using social media to get the word out on a grass-roots level is good.”