

State Department bureau spent $630,000 on Facebook 'likes' - stfu
http://washingtonexaminer.com/state-department-bureau-spent-630000-on-facebook-likes/article/2532629

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shortformblog
Here's the page in question:

[https://www.facebook.com/democracychallenge](https://www.facebook.com/democracychallenge)

There's definitely engagement happening on here. 2 percent of 2 million people
is still 40,000 regularly engaged people. And on top of that, the algorithms
probably had an effect on their engagement—they regularly had posts that
gained 5,000+ likes as of last year, though the number has slowed down
significantly. The question is, was it worth the cost as far as exposure and
marketing goes? Did it reach the audience it was looking to reach?

It may have, at least for a while. Based on this 2011 press release that
trumpets its 80% user base under the age of 24, they were clearly trying to
reach young adults, no matter what the IG says in his report:

[http://www.state.gov/r/pa/prs/ps/2011/03/159381.htm](http://www.state.gov/r/pa/prs/ps/2011/03/159381.htm)

It may not have been worth it in the end, but I get wary when I see standard-
issue "government waste" stories like this, because what often happens is that
the truth is somewhere in-between.

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scottkduncan
Great comment. As someone who works for the U.S. government (all opinions here
are my own!), one of the most frustrating things about working there is the
extreme sense of risk aversion in trying new things. If you stick to the
status quo and don't rock the boat, even if what you are doing isn't effective
you won't run into any difficulties. However, the second you try something new
and it fails (or just doesn't live up to expectations), allegations of waste
and incompetence follow.

In the private sector, how many companies have spent millions trying to figure
out how to make social media work for their businesses before finding an
approach that delivers results? If government doesn't have the same
flexibility to experiment, it will never figure out how to harness some of
these new tools and will end up being relegated even more than it already is
to using obsolete approaches and technologies.

Ideally government would have the ability to rapidly try new, small dollar
projects with the expectation that many efforts would fail but a few would
succeed and end up contributing to a new way of doing business. Unfortunately
the institutional bias towards big, safe, and old-fashioned approaches is
reinforced each time an innovative attempt at something new is perceived as
falling short.

~~~
shortformblog
That's exactly it, Scott. In my day gig, I regularly see these kinds of
bureaucratic waste stories surface about fairly innocuous things taken out of
context, showing up on sites like the Examiner or the Daily Caller or
Politico. They're meant to rile folks up and get them angry, because they draw
traffic and such.

But when you dig a little deeper, the scooplets at times don't tend to stand
up to scrutiny. (An example of this from a couple of years ago, involving a
"$16 muffin": [http://sfbne.ws/122aqOr](http://sfbne.ws/122aqOr) )

In this case, the two-percent engagement number is a huge tell, because if you
were to say 40,000 users or whatever it is, it wouldn't sound nearly as much
like a waste of money.

And if you were to put this in context of what other marketing companies pay
to get on Facebook, as well as the per-user costs they were paying, especially
compared to other marketing venues, you might find that this is actually the
most effective form of marketing for them. (How much did they spend on
TV/magazine/other forms of outreach in the past? And what was their success
rate?)

I'm not saying that this isn't a huge waste of money or time—it may still turn
out to be, and a big one at that—but we aren't being given all of the
variables here, and being asked to base this entire story on one side of the
claims.

Remember—in D.C. political media, sometimes you won't hear the other side of
the story, so being skeptical and not taking things at face value is probably
for the best.

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jmduke
An honest question: is there a rational reason to get upset about this but not
about other State Dept. marketing/PR efforts? This number is a small fraction
of the State Department's overall budget and it increased their engagement
from 100,000 likes to 2 million.

I feel like the title invites a kneejerk reaction, but its entirely possible
this was the best way the State Department had to increase their
accessibility.

~~~
MikeCapone
"I feel like the title invites a kneejerk reaction, but its entirely possible
this was the best way the State Department had to increase their
accessibility."

Developing a presence on social media, sure. Buying "likes"..? I'd need to see
a convincing case that this helps in any way.

To me it sounds like a way of 'juking the stats', as they would say in The
Wire. A way for the people who created the social media program to report to
the higher-ups that "things are working really well, see, we have millions of
people liking us and using our pages!"

~~~
anigbrowl
That's not an accurate characterization. It's not that they were buying fake
'Likes' on, say, Facebook:

 _After the 2011 reorganization, the coordinator initiated a push to expand
the bureau 's presence on social media and other digital platforms. IIP
started or expanded English-language Facebook pages, Twitter feeds, and blogs
aimed directly at foreign audiences. The bureau also started or expanded
online activities in six foreign languages.

The coordinator initiated two campaigns in 2011 and 2012, with the goal of
building global outreach platforms for engagement with foreign audiences by
increasing the number of fans on IIP's four thematic Facebook properties,
primarily through advertising as well as through some page improvements. The
bureau spent about $630,000 on the two campaigns and succeeded in increasing
the fans of the English Facebook pages from about 100,000 to more than 2
million for each page. Advertising also helped increase interest in the
foreign language pages; by March 2013, they ranged from 68,000 to more than
450,000 fans.

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. Defenders of advertising point to
the difficulty of finding a page on Facebook with a general search and the
need to use ads to increase visibility._

~~~
anigbrowl
Ooops - s/Facebook/eBay.

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quackerhacker
This reminds me of the IRS' $60k Star Trek themed YouTube campaign [0].

Does this frivolous spending of tax payer money get categorized under
marketing expenses or operating losses? [sarcasm]

[0] [http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2297934/IRS-
apologiz...](http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2297934/IRS-apologizes-
making-spoof-Star-Trek-video-criticized-wasting-taxpayer-
dollars.html?ns_mchannel=rss&ns_campaign=1490)

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LoganCale
Why are politicians and the government seemingly so incompetent when it comes
to the value of digital products and services? This puts me in mind of
politicians who spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on a campaign website
that has nothing unique or difficult to make it worth so much more than any
other website.

~~~
meepmorp
Large businesses do similarly dumb things with digital products and services.
There's nothing I see here that's specific to government, except that there's
a publicly published report detailing expenditures and problems, which you
generally wouldn't see in business.

And, frankly, without reading the actual report (which the OP doesn't link to)
it's hard to know if you're getting the whole story here. The Washington
Examiner is a right wing publication, so it's not hard to see where they might
selectively present details to paint this in a negative light. Not saying that
they are distorting things, but absent a review of the original document, it's
something to keep in mind.

~~~
wam
It looks like the document is included in the article in a PDF viewer.
Sometimes those don't show up because of ad-blockers.

The Examiner does tend to cherry-pick, and it's definitely worth reviewing the
document. I searched the doc for "facebook" and it looks to me like the
broader goal was engagement, not "likes" as an end-all. They were working off
the assumption that more likes meant more engagement, and during that
campaign, people started to realize and point out that it wasn't happening.
And to that end it appears to be a waste of $630k.

But it's not the case that they just blindly wanted more likes because it
feels good. (The article doesn't say that, but a lot of people think about
"likes" that way). Facebook and Twitter are legit ways to reach international
audiences, for example, to disseminate propaganda / information (depending on
how you lean).

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fotoblur
Doesn't social proof constitute a valid operating expense when you're in the
business of peddling BS?

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TomGullen
What a horrific waste of money

~~~
CPAhem
Your tax $ at work...

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VladRussian2
that begs a question - how probable that FB has provided "inconspicuous"
services to government recently such that the payment for the services would
preferably be disassociated from the services and look like a stupid actions
of a bunch of incompetent bureaucrats instead?

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danso
Jesus, I can only imagine what they spent to develop their FarmVille
territory.

~~~
dakrisht
They have people on salary playing FarmVille

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clientbiller
Haven't they heard of fiverr.com?

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magoon
Executive branch.

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alex_doom
Lot's of $100 hammers I see.

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Zarathust
So a like is worth around 0.25$

