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| title | chunk | source | category | tags | date_saved | instance |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| DARPA Network Challenge | 1/3 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DARPA_Network_Challenge | reference | science, encyclopedia | 2026-05-05T12:44:48.672218+00:00 | kb-cron |
The 2009 DARPA Network Challenge was a prize competition for exploring the roles the Internet and social networking play in the real-time communications, wide-area collaborations, and practical actions required to solve broad-scope, time-critical problems. The competition was sponsored by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), a research organization of the United States Department of Defense. The challenge was designed to help the military generate ideas for operating under a range of circumstances, such as natural disasters. Congress authorized DARPA to award cash prizes to further DARPA's mission to sponsor revolutionary, high-payoff research that bridges the gap between fundamental discoveries and their use for national security. In the competition, teams had to locate ten red balloons placed around the United States and then report their findings to DARPA. Due to the distributed nature of the contest, many teams used online resources, such as social media sites, to gather information or to recruit people that would look for balloons. Teams often had to deal with false submissions, and so they needed to come up with ways to validate and confirm reported sightings. The contest was concluded in under nine hours, much less than expected by DARPA, and had many implications with regard to the power of online social networking and crowdsourcing in general. In addition to the Network Challenge, DARPA has also conducted prize competitions in other areas of technology.
== Specifics of the competition == Under the rules of the competition, the $40,000 challenge award would be granted to the first team to submit the locations of 10 moored, 8-foot, red weather balloons at 10 previously undisclosed fixed locations in the continental United States. The balloons were to be placed in readily accessible locations visible from nearby roads, each staffed by a DARPA agent who would issue a certificate validating each balloon location. The balloons were deployed at 10:00 AM Eastern Time on December 5, 2009, and scheduled to be taken down at 5:00 PM. DARPA was prepared to deploy them for a second day and wait for up to a week for a team to find all of the balloons. Part of the purpose of the challenge was to force participants to discern actual pertinent information from potential noise. Many teams came across false reports of sightings, both accidental and purposeful. One valid strategy was spamming social networks with false reports to throw competitors off the trail of real sightings. The verification of balloon sightings was paramount to success. The contest was announced only about a month before the start date. This limited the amount of time teams had to prepare. The ability of many to do so showed the effectiveness of mass and social media to distribute information and organize people quickly. The time in which information about the challenge spread was actually more compressed than a month. However, in the week preceding the launch day the official competition site increased in traffic from an average of 1,000 hits per day to 20,000 hits per day. Similarly, the efforts of many competing teams went viral in the last few days before the start date. DARPA selected the date of the competition to commemorate the 40th anniversary of the Internet.
== Results == Even though DARPA was prepared to deploy the balloons for a second day and accept submissions for up to a week until a team found all 10 balloons, the MIT Red Balloon Challenge Team won the competition in under 9 hours. A team from the Georgia Tech Research Institute (GTRI), which located nine balloons, won second place. Two other teams found eight balloons, five found seven, and the iSchools team (which represented Pennsylvania State University, University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign, University of Pittsburgh, Syracuse University, and University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill), whose strategy is described below, finished tenth with six balloons. In table form, the top ten teams were:
== Winning strategy == The winning MIT team used a technique similar to multi-level marketing to recruit participants, with the prize money to be distributed up the chain of participants leading to successful balloon spottings, and all prize income remaining after distribution to participants to be given to charity. The team's strategy for public collaboration in finding the balloons was explained on their website: