I don't believe Facebook set up this contest in order to find solutions to a problem they have. The biggest clue is that the graph given to contenders was a dir

I don't believe Facebook set up this contest in order to find solutions to a problem they have. The biggest clue is that the graph given to contenders was a directed graph, unlike Facebook's social graph. It seems very likely to me they used that problem in order to find good candidates for their data-group, which is exactly what this contest was all about. Either that, or they are trying to expand the social graph of Instagram :)