BrandSnark: Good Week/Bad Week for the Big Brands

Good Week: Facebook The social media overlord announced a number of efforts aimed at supporting charitable causes, including providing the Red Cross with access to data on users’ needs and locations during emergencies and establishing an annual $50M fund to match disaster-relief donations. Helpful hint to Facebook ad sales team: $50M U.S. equals roughly 2.924 billion rubles.

Bad Week: American Airlines A glitch in the software the carrier uses to schedule crews has it scrambling find pilots to operate nearly 15,000 holiday season flights that were scheduled without a captain, co-pilot or both. In other words, you’d have a better chance of arriving at your holiday destination if you flew TWA, Pan-Am or Eastern.

Worse Week: Apple – The typically can’t-miss brand took a hit this week when it was discovered that a security flaw in its recently released High Sierra OS could allow anyone to gain administrative access to your Mac without a password. An update is in the works.