On Facebook, that is.
It can be really tough to make friends. I should know: I’m a blogger! So I can’t blame the State Department for spending hundreds of thousands of taxpayer dollars to get more “likes” on Facebook. Wouldn’t you do that if you were them?
Michal Conger at 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.
The department’s Bureau of International Information Programs spent the money to increase its “likes” count between 2011 and March 2013…
The spending increased the bureau’s English-language Facebook page likes from 100,000 to more than 2 million and to 450,000 on Facebook’s foreign-language pages.
Despite the surge in likes, the IG said the effort failed to reach the bureau’s target audience, which is largely older and more influential than the people liking its pages.
So? Since when does the success or failure of a government initiative have any bearing on anything? What do they care? It’s not their money.
And what do you care, for that matter? Get back to work, you. All this wonderful stuff isn’t just gonna pay for itself.
(Hat tip: Mike Riggs)
