Tim Hwang, (aka Broseph Stalin, aka @TimHwang) father of ROFLCon, mother of The Awesome Foundation for the Arts and Sciences (in which I hold a chair, mostly for other people), commissioner of The U.S. Bureau of Fabulous Bitches, god of The Web Ecology Project (aka @WebEcology), former Berkman Center researcher and partner in the firm of Robot Robot & Hwang (latest case: an open source project to develop the legal infrastructure to allow for large scale securitizing of lawsuits), in the cause of Researching Quantized Social Interaction, brings us the first-ever competitive event in the large scale robotic influence of online social groups. SOCIALBOTS 2011.
Specifically,
Teams will program bots to control user accounts on Twitter in a brutal, two-week, all-out, no-holds-barred battle to influence an unsuspecting cluster of 500 online users to do their bidding. Points will be given for connections created by the bots and the social behaviors they are able to elicit among the targets. All code to be made open-source under the MIT license.
It’s blood sport for internet social science/network analysis nerds. Winner to be rewarded $500, unending fame and glory, and THE SOCIALBOTS CUP.
Let the gaming begin.
Leave a Reply