What exactly is a 'panic button'? I've written before that child safety and online behaviour is a far more nuanced problem than a single Batphone-style button could solve, but it's an image that still obscures the detail in the ongoing tustle between Facebook and Ceop, the Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre.

The solution announced today is not a panic button - it's an app. It is something every major brand has had, in the form of a page or an app, on Facebook for some time - but that public agencies don't have the marketing resources to come up with. This project took two months.


Photo by emilydickinsonridesabmx on Flickr. Some rights reserved

Facebook say the app combines its expertise on technology and marketing with Ceop's in online safety. This is not a 'reverse ferret' on the company's stance that a panic button is not an effective solution; it still holds that one button published on every page of the site will attract too many false reports and create too much work for Ceop. What it does do is give Ceop the chance to put its logo, which is recognised by most UK schoolchildren, on an official page and use the virality of Facebook to promote the service.

On the downside, because users have to actively add this app to their profiles to use it, the viral success of the app depends on how attractive it is. Though it will be helped by promotion in Facebook's ad spots over the next two years it will still be competing with Farmville, vibrating hamsters and quizzes about which member of Glee you most look like.

This is just one privacy-related issue Facebook is dealing with, alongside changes in its privacy terms that have triggered various protests and demands for a simplification of its privacy settings for users.

Obviously, no one has any truck with the mission of CEOP ", which is important. But I can 't help feeling that this decision is long overdue, and that in the bigger picture, CEOP needs a more complex and youth campaigns.

Though the name 'Ceop' is being promoted in schools, it's a terribly dull acronym and an unimaginative brand with little resonance that will miss the opportunity to engage a far larger audience. Think of the NSPCC's Full Stop campaign, the Department of Health's Change4Lifeor a brilliant campaign against drugs Talk to Frank . Still, with 40% cuts I don't suppose we'll see that kind of imagination or impact from a government-run campaign for years.