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Friday, March 29, 2024

Wildfire app and the COVID-19 Pandemic

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With the world still reeling from the effects of the COVID-19, only a handful are ignoring safety precautions for the COVID-19, which has caused the novel coronavirus to spread fast. Developing countries are still unable to cope with the virus despite global travel ban being repealed slowly.

Thankfully, a large number of mechanisms have been able to tackle the problem nicely. Wildfire App, the app which has been used to notify people of important events happening nearby (especially in the United States) has been able to help many with the COVID-19 pandemic. It has notified many of where the virus wreaked havoc and which places were not affected by it.

How did the Wildfire App help people during the COVID-19 outbreak?

The COVID-19 is often referred to as the novel coronavirus (coronavirus in short). It has affected the United States at multiple levels. With cases exceeding that of Europe and Canada, there came a need to make more Americans aware of this disease.

Thankfully, Wildfire has helped many people obtain crucial information for their well-being’s sake and for taking necessary precautions. A lot of employees and students have posted about the virus in their respective areas.

Currently, information about new COVID-19 cases as well as business closures, and cancellation of events is being spread across many sources. Thankfully, Wildfire is able to verify all of this information and notifications related to it.

Wildfire was created for this very purpose. It was created to help spread information in easiest and quickest way. It is aimed to help people stay informed with information & notifications regarding incidents in their respective local areas.

The app’s moderators, developers and management team decided to dedicate extra focus in helping people stay aware about the Coronavirus (COVID-19) and its whereabouts.

Pertaining to the COVID-19, the Wildfire App added a new tab containing news alerts about the pandemic in affected areas. Such information is verified via independent sources. It has also been observed that in challenging times, community support is one of the best support mechanisms present around. Also, the mission of many good Samaritans is to help foster it.

Wildfire’s Modus Operandi – How does it moderate and verify news and information related to the COVID-19?

The COVID-19 tab of Wildfire contains those news and information related to the coronavirus. Tis is information is verified from well-assessed and renown sources of news. Institutes like the Center for Disease Control (CDC) and the World Health Organization (WHO) also help with its verification and for more you can visit technofuss.

A brief introduction to Wildfire app

The Wildfire App is a mobile app that aims to keep people informed of important events happening around them. It also helps users spread notifications of these very events with relative ease, even when there is a calamity.

Currently, the app is present in the phones of more than 350,000 students studying across more than 200 colleges and universities across the United States and Canada. It was jointly created by Hriday Lemburu, Tim Hyon, Jay Patel and Vinay Ramesh.

What is the app’s working mechanism?

The App helps users learn about important and trending posts in the form of alerts to people nearby. Real life examples are as under:

  • Public safety.
  • Protests.
  • Celebrities sighted.
  • Postponement of classes in educational institutions.

When was the app’s idea conceived?

The idea for Wildfire took place when one of it’s founders, Hriday Kemburu; fell victim to an attempted mugging outside the main library on University of California-Berkeley in 2015. Two men wearing ski masks jumped on him, but he had escaped luckily.

He did notify campus police about the incident. He had also posted about the incident on Facebook (on his own profile and across various student groups too). However, it did not reach all students of the University as he was not connected to each one of them on Facebook.

With a low probability of students checking their social feeds hovering around, He realized the need for an app to reach each and every student quickly. That information should be based on relevant real time information. Since existing social networks proved to be ineffective and limited to certain number of people, Wildfire was created as an effective mechanism to cascade information to everyone.

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