Be a Red Balloon Spotter
Being a spotter is easy. If on December 5th any big Red Balloons are reported in your area we'll send you a text message. If you're nearby and can confirm the balloon, let us know and you could earn $250.
Don't hesitate. Join the Race!
Why the Competition?
It's a social networking experience put on by DARPA. Work together with people from all over the country by just doing your
regular thing. See a red balloon, report it. It's that easy. Check out their site for full details.
Keep Your Eyes Peeled!
Who are You?
We're a couple of recent MIT grads looking to get people excited about the race. Also, don't worry about your contact info - that'll be
destroyed as soon as the Race is over. No, we won't ever spam you. That'd be lame.
contact at redballoonrace.com
Submit Balloon Sightings!
Congrats to the MIT team that won. We wish we had gotten as much publicity ahead of the competition as you did - we may have had a shot at winning!
WHY WE THINK MIT WON? We don't think it was the 'give it all away' strategy that won the competition. Plenty of teams had noble causes and intelligent incentive structures. We believe that it was the fact that prior to the competition most major news publications cited the MIT team in their articles and then syndicating networks pushed the message along to all the far reaches of America. That help can really get a viral growth strategy jump started, and moreover, means that any person who happened to see the article and see a balloon would know immediately where to go.
OUR TEAM Our team was composed of two people: Christian Rodriguez and Tara Chang (both MIT '08). On game day we were assisted by Chirley and Charlene Rodriguez, Mike Anderson, and Olivia Linder. We were also supported by everyone who submitted balloons to us and spread the word about our team. Thank you all for your support!
OUR STRATEGY We knew we wouldn't have the most people on the ground, but we could be the place people searching for info on the competition would end up. We set up an optimized SEM campaign to drive our initial submissions, and did a fair amount of Twitter analysis both manually and using some automated parsers built beforehand. Once we had some seed data we began trading with other teams and that's really where we made the most progress. We were, after all just two people. Towards the end we started slowing down because we thought the last balloons would never be found. We were wrong. We should have kept on trading. We could have won.
We found 8/10 balloons and ended up in 3rd place. Thanks DARPA for putting on such a fun competition. Again, congrats winnders. Here's looking forward to next time.
Christian Rodriguez and Tara Chang
public -AT- mrchrisrodriguez -DOT- com
WHY WE THINK MIT WON? We don't think it was the 'give it all away' strategy that won the competition. Plenty of teams had noble causes and intelligent incentive structures. We believe that it was the fact that prior to the competition most major news publications cited the MIT team in their articles and then syndicating networks pushed the message along to all the far reaches of America. That help can really get a viral growth strategy jump started, and moreover, means that any person who happened to see the article and see a balloon would know immediately where to go.
OUR TEAM Our team was composed of two people: Christian Rodriguez and Tara Chang (both MIT '08). On game day we were assisted by Chirley and Charlene Rodriguez, Mike Anderson, and Olivia Linder. We were also supported by everyone who submitted balloons to us and spread the word about our team. Thank you all for your support!
OUR STRATEGY We knew we wouldn't have the most people on the ground, but we could be the place people searching for info on the competition would end up. We set up an optimized SEM campaign to drive our initial submissions, and did a fair amount of Twitter analysis both manually and using some automated parsers built beforehand. Once we had some seed data we began trading with other teams and that's really where we made the most progress. We were, after all just two people. Towards the end we started slowing down because we thought the last balloons would never be found. We were wrong. We should have kept on trading. We could have won.
We found 8/10 balloons and ended up in 3rd place. Thanks DARPA for putting on such a fun competition. Again, congrats winnders. Here's looking forward to next time.
Christian Rodriguez and Tara Chang
public -AT- mrchrisrodriguez -DOT- com
Win Red Balloon Prizes
Report a Balloon:$400
Confirm a Balloon:$250
Refer a Spotter:$100
Report 3-5 Balloons:$1500 each
Report 5-7 Balloons:$2500 each
Report 8-10 Balloons:$3500 each