There was a lot of media interest for the press conference in The Hague on November 11, where the Dutch Minister of Justice Hirsch Ballin officially launched the new alert system for missing children. The first two days, Dutch radio and television newscasts and newspapers were plastered with news on AMBER Alert. And the news was even picked up by the national and online press in countries such as Belgium and the US.

All this media attention has resulted in over 50,000 registrations in the first week alone, and 60,000 to date. Currently a little under 15,000 people have downloaded the AMBER Alert Pop up Player and Screensaver, a little under 15,000 have registered to receive AMBER Alert SMS text message Alerts, and over 31,000 have registered to receive AMBER Alert E-mail Alerts. This adds to the thousands of registrations for the Instant Messenger services, RSS Newfeeds and Website Alert.

With the AMBER Alert Banner launch on December 2, the first new Alert type has been added. With the AMBER Alert Banner, people can now display AMBER Alerts on their websites, including Hyves and iGoogle personal pages. The AMBER Alert Banner is a static picture displayed on the webpage, which changes into a digital APB on the missing or abducted child as soon as the Dutch police issues an AMBER Alert. This offers an alternative for the AMBER Alert Website Alert, which is displayed as a small icon and uses a pop up window to bring the child’s APB to the attention of the user as soon as an AMBER Alert is issued.