EDIT: From http://balloon.mit.edu, it looks like they just created a system to assign personalized tracking links to which you could submit pics and coordinates of balloons, as well as invite other people to get a personalized tracking link of their own. If you found a balloon, you got $2000, plus your inviter got $1000, plus their inviter got $500, etc, etc. Simple but obviously effective.
Also, the NYC police department has a new sign I saw the other day.
"Crime doesn't pay, but anti-crime does. Anonymously report crime and receive an award of up to $2000."
Humans respond to incentives. This is fundamental.
This is what the challenge says: "The Challenge explores basic research issues such as mobilization, collaboration, and trust in diverse social networking constructs and could serve to fuel innovation across a wide spectrum of applications."
That's pretty general, and we now know the solution - so does this have any commercial applications?
As for commercial applications, maybe marketing as it incentivizes spamming your friends and family.
$2000 for the first terrorist found. Seems like you'd get lots of random arrests in hopes of scoring the $2000.
It's not like a terrorist is like a red balloon at clearly visible intersections (as per the contest design in this case). But maybe rewards should be designed such that they also incentivize the second order referral network to encourage more people to care (in effect creating something of a decentralized team) - perhaps encouraging a referral network to train others to the task.
There are all sorts of problems though if the target is a terrorist though. Recently the bigger problem seems to be home grown terrorists so it's not as if they'd stick out. If the problem is applied to a place like Afghanistan in hunting for insurgents, there could well be a number of disincentives to the local population to reporting it (whether it be out of loyalty or fear) and those disincentives might considerably greater than the incentives - particularly to the referral network - a network I'd add would know your loyalties in a rather dangerous place. Similar problems for finding a bomb or anything that doesn't want to be found for that matter.
Maybe there will be a future challenge where the balloons are more hidden. It also reminds me of this: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=955793
Greed is the only solution I can come up with.
