{"id":1559,"date":"2009-12-15T07:24:31","date_gmt":"2009-12-15T12:24:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/BrandTwist.com\/?p=1559"},"modified":"2018-10-18T20:14:40","modified_gmt":"2018-10-18T20:14:40","slug":"social-media-and-the-red-balloon-challenge","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/brandtwist.com\/blog\/social-media\/social-media-and-the-red-balloon-challenge\/","title":{"rendered":"Social Media and The Red Balloon Challenge"},"content":{"rendered":"

Have you seen this? It’s so cool.<\/p>\n

DARPA (The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency) tapped into social networking for it’s latest challenge.<\/a><\/p>\n

The contest awards $40,000 to the first group to name the exact latitude and longitude of ten red balloons.<\/p>\n

The ten weather balloons are scattered across the continental US and remain in the air for one full day. Contestants have a week to locate the balloons and provide the answers.<\/p>\n

Since no one person can cover that much territory alone, the groups must rely on social media to help solve the mystery.<\/p>\n


\nThe point of the contest wasn’t really to find the balloons (DARPA knew clearly where they were). It was to see how groups could activate social media for a quick and reliable locating of the balloons.<\/p>\n

The biggest problem was sifting through the amount of misinformation that was in the blogosphere and particularly on Twitter.<\/p>\n

This year’s winners were a group from MIT<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\"MIT<\/a><\/p>\n

To meet the misinfomation\u00a0obstacle, the MIT team\u00a0created incentives for people to sign up trusted friends or acquaintances who might have a chance of spotting balloons.<\/p>\n

They split all the DARPA prize money per correct submission: $2000 per balloon to the first person who sent in correct coordinates, $1000 to the person who invited them, $500 to whoever invited the inviter, and $250 to whoever invited them. The last $250 went to charity.<\/p>\n

They found all balloons just 9 hours after the first one was placed.<\/p>\n

Quite a feat, and tangible evidence of the power of social networks.<\/p>\n

That’s my point of view. What’s your twist?
\nWhat lessons can we learn from this challenge?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Have you seen this? It’s so cool. DARPA (The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency) tapped into social networking for it’s latest challenge. The contest awards $40,000 to the first group to name the exact latitude and longitude of ten red balloons. The ten weather balloons are scattered across the continental US and remain in the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[56],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1559","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","category-social-media"],"aioseo_notices":[],"aioseo_head":"\n\t\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t