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."

Comments

not exactly a lot of money

[Trepidity]

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.

Re:not exactly a lot of money

[Joce640k]

I agree. A much better long term saving would be to fire the person who signed that plan.

Re:not exactly a lot of money

[bagboy]

Um, thinking that 600k may have paid for some increased security around Bengazi, or for a quick rescue team? I'm pretty sure the state department has many other priorities that could have been funded with this waste.

Re:not exactly a lot of money

[Le Marteau]

It's more than just the monetary cost. It's a morality issue.

Is it moral to take, under threat of jail, funds from anyone, no matter how small, to pay for Facebook likes?

Our government is immoral. Cases such as this serve to highlight it.

Apologist for our immoral government will continue to say, "oh, what's a million dollars here or there" not realizing or denying how obscene their position actually is.

Re:We need another Egypt...

[Trepidity]

When thinking of good models to emulate, are you thinking more of Egypt Revolution 1.0, which got taken over by the Muslim Brotherhood, or of Egypt Revolution 2.0, which got taken over by the military?

Re:not exactly a lot of money?

[Trepidity]

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.

The page

[phantomfive]

Here is the page. It's hard for me to understand why the state department even cares if people visit their page or not.

Re:The page

[bill_mcgonigle]

It's hard for me to understand why the state department even cares if people visit their page or not.

Propaganda always sells itself as the popular choice.

Re:We need another Egypt...

[nospam007]

"The people running the country no longer understand it. They're obsolete."

You don't understand, after thousands of years, civil servants finally found a way to get people to LIKE them.
Small wonder they overdid it.

Re:not exactly a lot of money?

[aardvarkjoe]

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.

Re:not exactly a lot of money?

[aardvarkjoe]

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.