Twitter launches emergency alert service

Twitter launched an emergency alert service Wednesday designed to help users get crucial information in the event of an emergency.

Alerts is meant to deliver the most important and accurate information from "credible organizations during emergencies, natural disasters or moments when other communications services aren't accessible."

"If you sign up to receive an account’s Twitter Alerts, you will receive a notification directly to your phone whenever that account marks a Tweet as an alert," the company wrote in their blog.

"Notifications are delivered via SMS, and if you use Twitter for iPhone or Twitter for Android, you’ll also receive a push notification*. Alerts also appear differently on your home timeline from regular Tweets; they will be indicated with an orange bell."

To subscribe to the notifications, users must go directly to an account's setup page: "twitter.com/[username]/alerts."

"See FEMA’s page at twitter.com/FEMA/alerts for an example," the post said. "Additionally, on web, you can see if an organization is part of the program when you visit its profile."

To receive Twitter Alerts as push notifications, users must be using Twitter for iPhone version 5.10 or higher, and Twitter for Android 4.1.6 or higher.