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State Dept. Bureau Spent $630k On Facebook 'Likes'
schwit1 writes with this excerpt from the Washington Examiner: "State Department officials spent $630,000 to get more Facebook 'likes,' prompting employees to complain to a government watchdog that the bureau was 'buying fans' in social media, the agency's inspector general says. 'Many in the bureau criticize the advertising campaigns as "buying fans" who may have once clicked on an ad or "liked" a photo but have no real interest in the topic and have never engaged further,' the inspector general reported. The effort failed to reach the bureau's target audience, which is largely older and more influential than the people liking its pages. Only about 2 percent of fans actually engage with the pages by liking, sharing or commenting.
In September 2012 Facebook also changed its approach to users' news feeds, and the expensive 'fan' campaigns became much less valuable. The bureau now must constantly pay for sponsored ads to keep its content visible even to people who have already liked its pages."
The people running the country no longer understand it. They're obsolete.
Time to take to the streets and kick them out.
No sig today...
The state department's budget is about $50 billion annually. There is probably some waste in there, but shaving off $630k in Facebook marketing is not a very promising place to start (that'd be a savings of 0.00126%!).
Besides which, various PR nonsense is a big part of what the state department does; it's sort of the marketing/sales department of the U.S. government.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
It sure didn't help us much because the rest of the world thinks we're a bunch of hypocritical pricks who want to boss everyone else around. "Do as we say, not as we do!" should be added to the Statue of Liberty.
I really like this story!
WTF? Half a MILLION dollars buying bots!?!?!?!? Get some highschoolers to get your social network poppin' for you, and give them some college in return!!!!!!!
You must be:
a- joking
b- a politician
c- lost your sense of reality
I suspect it's the people pushing this kind of populist story who fall into category (b). Let's say we have a $50 billion agency, and think it should save money. We could:
Option 1. Start by looking at the major expenses, and find some that can be cut down. Let's define "major expenses" here generously as anything that takes at least 1% of the State Department's budget. Are those all necessary? Can some of them, even if necessary, be done with less? Make these the main targets of your anti-waste campaign.
Option 2. Pick something down in the noise, under 0.01% of the budget. But find something that makes for a good evening-news scandal. Something populist having to do with the price of toilet seats, or Facebook, or something else that you can explain in under 10 seconds to idiots. Make this the main target of your "anti-waste" campaign.
The main difference is that Option 1 may actually save money, while Option 2 is just political grandstanding.
See also: idiots who think arguing over PBS funding is going to balance the federal budget.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
Think of how many bitcoins they could have bought!
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
Here is the page. It's hard for me to understand why the state department even cares if people visit their page or not.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
Well stated. Option 2 being the go-to method if the 2010's has much to do with the deterioration in discourse.
I agree! The budget is so big that we shouldn't even consider looking at an item if it isn't in the "top 100" projects list.
In this sense, let's buy everyone an Alienware computer, upgrade to the most expensive brand of toilet paper, put in a soda fridge that is fully stocked for all federal employees, paint the building every year, and invite Britney Spears to the company picnic.
Waste less than 1% of the budget is still waste. The fact that the employees themselves thought that it was enough waste to report it should be an indication.
This is the dichotomy of social media. People want to get money from the folks that actually have money. These tend to be older (30s to 50s) people and also the "married, no children" crowd. Most of these people are not the folks who actually will respond to advertising campaigns wasting their time clicking "like" or "plus 1" on My_Twit_Face_+. The ones who do this are younger and have little disposable income. Hence the problem with generating revenue (or engagement really) through these services.
In government, you are not judged by results. You are judged by appearances, specifically how many people you can fool for long enough that they forget all the stuff you've screwed up.
This is why as little as possible should be entrusted to government. Even government workers will generally agree with this: government works best when it has a small set of goals and some way of measuring "success" other than cheering uninformed voters.
Futurist Traditionalism
Timothy (the poster of the story) better watch out. If we have learned anything from the Snowden affair, the government doesn't like it's dirty secrets aired in public.
There's no reason why you can't reduce waste in both categories. Which is what most of us who oppose government waste want to do.
How can we continue to believe in a just universe and freedom to eat crackers if we have no ale?
2% engagement on facebook is pretty good. I lead social media for a well-recognized brand and we try to aim for > 3% engagement rates on facebook.
...we hear and obey.
Except this isn't waste, activity like this is part of their job description. You may question its efficacy, but your opinion doesn't really matter, does it? Bring some evidence that it doesn't work, otherwise you're barking at the moon.
Why does it have to be either-or? Some people can look at the big expenditures, others can look at the small ones. It might be that there is no significant waste in the big expenditures, which means targeting the small ones makes sense. A bunch of small ones add up to one big one. The fact that the budgets are so massive that $630,000 seems hardly worth bothering about is not a good sign. That means any expense can be justified, since it is only a fraction of a thousandths of the total budget, so who cares.
I agree! The budget is so big that we shouldn't even consider looking at an item if it isn't in the "top 100" projects list.
In this sense, let's buy everyone an Alienware computer, upgrade to the most expensive brand of toilet paper, put in a soda fridge that is fully stocked for all federal employees, paint the building every year, and invite Britney Spears to the company picnic.
Waste less than 1% of the budget is still waste. The fact that the employees themselves thought that it was enough waste to report it should be an indication.
True... but this is like software optimization, you can spend your time fixing 1000 things that have a 0.00126% impact and you're still fucked.
Or you can go after something that will actually make a difference.
XML is a known as a key material required to create SMD: Software of Mass Destruction
If you add up and cut all the "less than 1%" garbage that is in a budget, maybe you can spare the biggest programs- the ones that presumably are more important.
I've heard arguments that "all the low hanging fruit is gone", "the easy to cut items have been cut already" etc. More pork is created every day by all members of congress. Recognizing wasteful spending and public backlash should be a continual process.
Even those who arrange and design shrubberies are under considerable economic stress at this period in history.
Dear Homo:
The story was in the Washington EXAMINER. I realize that it's easy to make such a mistake, particularly when you have some trucker's penis in your mouth at the same time as you comment here...
But here is a link to a site frequented by homos such as yourself: HTH
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/07/03/state-department-facebook-likes-spent-630000_n_3541734.html
zomg wer reding your msgs lol
I swear to God...I swear to God! That is NOT how you treat your human!
Doesn't matter. I don't care if it was only $63.00 spent on Facebook likes. If it's a stupid thing to do, stop doing it. Just because $630,000 is by you a trivial sum is irrelevant - it's still taxpayers' money spent stupidly. One doesn't have to have some external big goal to decide if a sum is worth not spending; all that's needful is to judge a given expenditure for what it is.
For that matter, either-or thinking is itself stupid.
Why did it cost 600k+ to do this is my question? They could have just interfaced the NSA database with a script and created accounts from people who are recently deceased and liked the living hell out of what ever page they thought needed the lov'in. Throw in some AI for back and forth and you would have a love consensus of biblical porportions. I bet I could have pulled this off for half what they think they spent, which is probably half of what really got flushed.
'I don't know what it's called. I just know the sound it makes, when it takes a man's life.' ~ Four Leaf Tayback
Just like software optimization. When you've got '1000 things' to fix, you've really got 1 thing to fix: Process/Culture. There is a difference between premature optimization and not doing stupid slow things.
Even if you can eventually 'fix' the mess, it's now a mess with the inner loops optimized, not cleaned up. The original team is likely making another mess.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
Why did it cost 600k+ to do this is my question? They could have just interfaced the NSA database with a script and created accounts from people who are recently deceased and liked the living hell out of what ever page they thought needed the lov'in. Throw in some AI for back and forth and you would have a love consensus of biblical porportions. I bet I could have pulled this off for half what they think they spent, which is probably half of what really got flushed.
the way nsa does contracting if they had done that it would have cost 1 million bucks. what, you think perl coders come in trees and don't need 3 levels deep organization that also needs to get paid from the contract??
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
Good point. Au temps pour moi
'I don't know what it's called. I just know the sound it makes, when it takes a man's life.' ~ Four Leaf Tayback
Back in the year of the flood there was a likely fabricated story about the NSA. If NSA QA found a bug in your software they would just send it back and tell you: 'there's a bug.' The theory was that the programmers didn't really start looking for bugs until then. Claim was the programmers fixed an average of 9 bugs before they found the one that QA found.
Think how much that kind of process costs. Don't involve the spooks. Fire the idiot who approved this expense.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
Just like software optimization. When you've got '1000 things' to fix, you've really got 1 thing to fix: Process/Culture. There is a difference between premature optimization and not doing stupid slow things.
Even if you can eventually 'fix' the mess, it's now a mess with the inner loops optimized, not cleaned up. The original team is likely making another mess.
Not at all, you can be inefficient in non-critial code if it makes it easier to understand or maintain.
But if you're attacking a performance problem you don't start by wasting your time and money on little pointless fixes, you go for the root of the problem with extreme prejudice.
"Well we're still bottlenecked on the DB, but I made the pages load 5ms faster by spending the day optimizing our CSS."
And now nobody will understand it... thanks Bob...
XML is a known as a key material required to create SMD: Software of Mass Destruction
True... but this is like software optimization, you can spend your time fixing 1000 things that have a 0.00126% impact and you're still fucked.
The reason why software developers will tackle the biggest performance bottlenecks first is because a developer can only work on one thing at a time, and so should attempt to get the largest return on their investment in time.
The government, however, is not a single person, and employs millions of people. The people that are able to address the waste in area A are probably not the same people that can address the waste in area B.
It would be foolish for a large software development team to assign every developer to work on the same performance problem. Similarly, it would be stupid to tell those who aren't working on the top problem to sit on their thumbs until the top problem is resolved. If a source of government waste is identified, then the appropriate thing to do is address it, not come up with excuses why it's not important.
How can we continue to believe in a just universe and freedom to eat crackers if we have no ale?
If you have 1000 things 'to fix' you've got a basic problem with producing crap in the first place. You start with the assumption that the system is clean, but only needs optimization. That doesn't match with your stated case of having '1000 things to fix'.
Sure you can make something work by fixing the critical parts. But if you don't want to be in the same position in a year you'd better change the culture and fire the worst mess makers.
Back on point: The person that authorized the buying a 'likes' should be fired immediately.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
That's interesting, good story. Thanks for sharing.
'I don't know what it's called. I just know the sound it makes, when it takes a man's life.' ~ Four Leaf Tayback
It must be terrible to have to constantly pay more and feel like your getting less and less in return.
Welcome to the life of every tax payer, cable TV subscriber, health insurance purchaser, etc. I feel both the laugher of irony and the sorrow of more wasted tax payer dollars when private companies turn things around and "tax" the government.
buy the people's support with their own money.
In SOVIET RUSSIA... erm...NSA AMERICA, the Internet logs onto YOU!
That's way low. A lot of State employees have personal FB accounts where they post material similar to what would be on the embassy account. Add those in and the ROI for engagement is probably much higher.
bash-2.04$
bash-2.04$yes "Don't you hate dialup connections?"| write USERNAME