Historypin: Crowdsourcing the biggest digital photo archive in the world.

// July 5th, 2010 // b-inspired, b-wired // b-uncut

Crowdsourcing excels as a content creation and distribution model, just look at Wikipedia. International art projects, social activism and now the UK government are all employing crowdsourcing to excel productivity. NOW Historypin is utilising this social media phenomenon to create the biggest user-generated digital photo archive in the world. Crowdsourced photographs are synced with Google maps and hey presto, a geo-search-photo-archive-engine for everyone. This opens new doors for artists. Surely painters and photographers from past and present can exhibit on the new platform for exposure delivering crowdsourced art to the History pin mix.

The idea has gargantuan potential. They’re calling it a “digital time machine” and, this being the age of Wikiality, anyone can contribute. What’s history? Whatever you pin. Selfridges and M&S have both released their archives to the site giving Historypin a rolling start & no doubt giving the two establishments an intelligent method of ambient advertising.

It is early days but developments with augmented reality could rocket Historypin’s possibilities to a remarkable dimension. Imagine taking a walk around a city or ruin, accessing a deep interactive historic tour spanning from your present contribution back……