MIT Red Balloons social spread
This video illustrates how referral between participants of the MIT team spread on the continental U.S. before and during the DARPA challenge. Each white line represents a referral from an existing participant's location of the MIT team to the the location of a new team participant. ~36 hours before the competition, under the incentive described in the paper, people actively signed up with the MIT team and referred friends from all different areas, as the white lines expanded rapidly across the U.S. in the animation.
The lines highlighted in yellow represents referrals leading to locations where the balloons were actually launched. The social diffusion process started by the MIT team naturally led us to all ten balloon locations in an efficient manner for this time-critical task.
credit
Wei Pan
