The Tag Challenge is a social gaming competition, with a US$5,000 reward, in which participants were invited to find five "suspects" in a simulated law enforcement search in five different cities throughout North America and Europe on March 31, 2012.
It aimed to determine whether and how social media can be used to accomplish a realistic, time-sensitive, international law enforcement objective.
The photos would be verified through a unique code on both the front and back of the shirt, which was not revealed in a suspect's mug shot but known only to the organizers.
However, the Tag Challenge was expected to be significantly harder, due to the international distribution of the targets over so many countries and, more importantly, the fact that they were mobile.
[11] It was found that during the challenge, people were "able to consistently route information in a targeted fashion even under increasing time pressure."
Using a model of social-media fueled global mobilization, the authors estimated that during the most time-critical portion of the challenge, one in three social messages were geographically targeted.