Dan Nosowitz at Fast Company (http://www.fastcompany.com/user/221139) reports that “[...] The Child Exploitation and Online Protection Center, a government law enforcement agency, has been after social networking sites to provide protections for its underage users. Social networking sites, says CEOP, provide comparatively easy venues for child predators. The agency has seen some success–Bebo and MySpace already adopted the panic button–but Facebook resisted for a long time, saying its own protection was sufficient. [...] Jim Gamble, Ceop’s chief executive, said in a statement: “Our dialogue with Facebook about adopting the ClickCeop button is well documented – today however is a good day for child protection.
“By adding this application, Facebook users will have direct access to all the services that sit behind our ClickCeop button which should provide reassurance to every parent with teenagers on the site.” [...]” (full article at http://www.fastcompany.com/1669232/facebook-to-add-child-safety-panic-button-application).

So does Mike Hasley at ghacks (http://www.ghacks.net/author/mike/, full article at http://www.ghacks.net/2010/07/12/facebook-agrees-to-panic-button/)

While I’m still convinced of Facebook not being able to handle a decent security approach, this could be the first wise move from them.
Of course the panic button should not be seen as a “panacea”, because:

a) seems to me to be based on an awareness assumption by the supposed victim that is not so easy to be acquired by children of lower ages (means that you can cheat the date and be subject to stalks)
b) is still optional

This post as a comment also at http://www.fastcompany.com/1669232/facebook-to-add-child-safety-panic-button-application?partner=rss&utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed:%20fastcompany/headlines%20(Fast%20Company%20Headlines)#disqus_thread and at http://www.ghacks.net/2010/07/12/facebook-agrees-to-panic-button/