Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg announces organ donation initiative on profiles

NEW YORK - Facebook wants to help you share your organs.

Users in the United States and the U.K. can enroll as organ donors via links to official registries on the world's biggest social networking site, said CEO Mark Zuckerberg. The links should make it easier for people who want to donate their organs to sign up.

Facebook users who are already organ donors can add that information to their profile page, now known as their timeline.

Zuckerberg said his friendship with Apple Inc. co-founder Steve Jobs, who had received a liver transplant before he died last year, helped spur the idea, as did talks with his girlfriend Priscilla Chan, a medical student.

More than 112,000 Americans are waiting for organs and 18 people die every day from the lack of available organs, according to Donate Life America, a nonprofit that is teaming with Facebook.

Zuckerberg announced the organ donor update to Facebook on "Good Morning America" Tuesday.

Facebook Inc., based in Menlo Park, Calif., is busy readying an initial public stock offering said to be pegged at $5 billion. Facebook's IPO could place the company's value at $100 billion.