Retarded State Department Spent $630K of Facebook Likes

I blog about a lot of government waste, but this might rank near the top. The State Department has a Facebook page- but Lord only knows why. In addition to spending time updating this idiotic Facebook page, the State Department’s marketing department, and yes, they have one, spent 630,000 dollars buying Facebook Likes and pokes.

From the WashingtonExaminer here:

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.

“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 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. Only about 2 percent of fans actually engage with the pages by liking, sharing or commenting.

I wonder if they have a Benghazi Facebook page? You know the White House is closed to visitors due to the Sequestration. The Blue Angels are grounded. But Hillary Clinton’s State Department were buying freakin’ Facebook Fans??? If they spent that money on security, Ambassador Stevens might still be alive.