MIT Crowdsources Search to Win $40K in 9 Hours
About 58 teams recently competed in DARPA’s network challenge:
“The DARPA Network Challenge is a competition that will explore the roles the Internet and social networking play in the timely communication, wide-area team building, and urgent mobilization required to solve broad-scope, time-critical problems. The Network Challenge winner will be the first individual to submit the locations of 10 8-foot balloons moored at 10 fixed locations in the continental United States. The balloons will be in readily accessible locations and visible from nearby roads.”
The winning team, from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) used the following incentive scheme:
“To recruit people into their network of balloon spotters, the MIT team offered to split the prize money, so that if the team won, the person who correctly identified a balloon’s location got $2000. Finder fees were also offered, so that whoever referred a successful spotter would be given $1000; $500 went to the referrer of the referrer, $250 to the referrer of the referrer of the referrer, and so on, with any remainder going to charity.”
An interesting application of classic network marketing incentives to rapidly grow “a crowd” in a 21st century crowdsourcing model.
