Searching for balloons in a social network
In December 2009, 10 red weather balloons were launched from locations throughout the United States. The project’s aim: testing the mettle of social media. The Red Balloon Challenge, sponsored by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) of the U.S. Department of Defense, laid out a simple objective: Use social media to identify the GPS coordinates for all 10 balloons, suspended at fixed locations across the country. The first team to do so would win $40,000. The challenge, commemorating the 40th anniversary of the Internet, highlighted social networking’s potential to solve widely distributed, time-sensitive problems. More than 4,000 teams entered the competition. Many concentrated their efforts on coverage, reaching out over the Internet to people over as large a geographic area as possible. Some teams tapped into large databases such as college alumni listservs, while others appealed to audiences on Twitter and Facebook. The winning team, a group of MIT...