The Cost of Friends

Spike Milligan is quoted as saying, “Money can’t buy you friends, but you do get a better class of enemy.”

This was before cyberspace, hard drives and Facebook. We now know it costs $630,000 – at least that’s what the U.S. Inspector General claims.

That’s what the U.S. Bureau of International Information Programs (IIP) spent on two Facebook campaigns to increase its followers. The campaigns must have been successful as the IIP picked up 2 million new followers for each page — up from 100,000.

At last check, the actual number of likes for their page is somewhere between 70 and 75.  Most of those people who ‘like’ the IIP have names I can’t even pronounce.

That’s taxpayer money well spent.