A number of novel wireless networked services, ranging from participatory sensing to social networking, leverage the increasing capabilities of mobile devices and the movement of the individuals carrying them. For many of these systems, their effec- tiveness fundamentally depends on coverage and the particular mobility patterns of the participants. Given the strong spatial and temporal regularity of human mobility, the needed coverage can typically only be attained through a large participant base.

We are exploring an alternative approach to attain coverage without scale – (soft) controlling participants’ movements by leveraging the built-in incentives of location- based gaming and social applications. We call our approach Crowd Soft Control (CSC). By pairing network services with these location-based apps, CSC allows researchers to use an application’s incentives (e.g. games objectives) to control the movement of participating users, increasing the effectiveness and efficiency of the associated net- work service. In this talk, I will present the case for Crowd Soft Control, describe an
initial prototype of our ideas and discuss potential benefits and costs in the context of
two case studies.