Is All The Press Right About How Wrong NYE Is?

It was a cold and downright chilly Sunday in NYC this weekend, and like many I chose to stay nestled in my apartment rather than brave the windy streets to venture out to see a few notable films. The Artist? Saw it last week and LOVED this film--must, must see! Beautifully shot, wonderfully written and terrific actors providing unparalleled performances!

Young Adult with Charlize Theron? Must see...and will see when it opens wide. Note my earlier post on how I J'Adore her...but being a New Yorker, I played the neighborhood game and didn't want to head downtown or across town to the only two theaters showing it...I'll wait.

...and then there's New Year's Eve...which appears to be a thoughtful fluff of film that who couldn't love? With a cast of millions, surely there was a thread or two that my icy (read: cold, chilly) heart could love on a Sunday, right? But no, apparently not....at least not according to the vile reviews this opus was getting online. I had the opportunity to attend the fabulous wrap party at Brooklyn Bowl in NYC for this one, and have a video clip I'll add later of Abigail Breslin knocking out the crowd with her singing and guitar skills (video was banned on during the wrap-film set to Alicia Key's Empire State part II they played, which was quite cute and perhaps the behind the scenes was better than the film itself?). I even had the chance to provide luxe makeup for two principles in the film from a client (but can't mention names due to product contracts with competing brands).

Sadly, apparently this one is not even worthy of guilty-pleasure viewing on a Sunday on TBS according to the Daily Beast’s Ramin Setoodeh and Rolling Stone film critic Peter Travers in this video review...

Facebook: The Grinch Who Stole Brand Views

This week, the dark might of Facebook saw fit to without warning (that I can tell, or find) decided that brands no longer needed to be able to read or see who was following them. Previously a brand page (my team manages a few beyond our company page) could view who had "liked" them. You could see the profiles and some information about your "followers." Now--instead, and without any warning (I've looked on the Facebook Blog, itself not exactly easy to get to with the "forever scroll" on the right side of your newsfeed (which sucks btw)) Facebook chose to only provide their own Metric Statistics when you clicked on the "likes" page.

This means, that if you're advertising on Facebook, the onus is even stronger on you to manage to whom you are advertising via their own ad metrics tools. But once again, instead of engagement, shared information or transparency (much like how they approach users #Privacy), Facebook has chosen to decree their approach to the way brands must use their services. Facebook has a more-than-lousy approach to ham-handed adjustments to their privacy settings according to what they deem necessary for the user, and now they've done it to brands.

For whatever reason, I've found no mention of this anywhere. Which leads me to think that developers or social media managers aren't monitoring their audience and haven't noticed the change (I received only one DM msg on Twitter from TheXJetLife in response to a post about this to another company that noticed the change this week). This of course leads to a larger question of the numbers game that Facebook represents, and the age-old question of quantity vs. quality.

***UPDATE*** As of Monday December, 5th, you can view your "likes" by changing to "view as page" and look under the Friends tab at the top of the blue banner, as opposed to under the "likes" section on the left hand side.***

If we as brand managers can't actually "see" the followers/those-that-like-us and only the aggregate statistical data that Facebook provides, is this allowing us to manage our brands online--or are we simply putting all our marketing POV in the hands of the programmers in Palo Alto? And why hasn't this come up on Mashable, or AllThingsD or Social Media Today?

Twitter does a much better job of this, allowing you to see your followers and engage with them, while they lag in measurement, at least third parties have stepped into the fray to provide more details, although don't get me started on the stupidity of Klout being the "one" when it comes to influence (great Boycott piece from Hollis Tibbetts HERE). And while it took them awhile to integrate brands onto their platform, even Google+ has its own issues related a poorly designed app interface and the question of validity of profiles, written up interestingly by Gary Walker HERE.

With #OWS changing the way we view corporate entities, its alarming to me that the 24hr news feed hasn't picked up on this at all. Instead we are spoon fed puff pieces from Mashable on how wonderful TIMELINE will be for brands (you want me to share MORE with whom exactly?), the expansion of the character limits of your posts (good news?!) and the FTC slap on the wrist for Zuckerberg's hubris. Amazing to me that in our micro-world of news reportage and meme's how something like this can be left behind. Am I missing a link here? Please, share what you know.