Enlighten was acquired by Perficient Digital in December 2015.
We’re thrilled the rest of the world is beginning to discover the awesomeness of Enlighten’s WhatWasThere web- and mobile-based application, which allows anyone to upload historical photos, place them precisely on a Google map, and then within Google Street View to create a near seamless melding of past and present.
During the past several weeks, high praise has come from all corners of the media industry, including Laughing Squid, Gizmodo, Engadget, CNET, msnbc’s TODAY.com and The Atlantic. And then, just today, extended coverage came from Peabody-award winning journalist Brian Lehrer on his show Brian Lehrer Live, broadcast on CUNY TV.
Below is a snippet from Lehrer’s conversation with Enlighten (now Perficient Digital) founder and CEO Steve Glauberman. Catch the entire interview here.
Lehrer: Where do these photos come from? Is that the crowd source part of it?
Glauberman: Yes. WhatWasThere allows anybody to upload and place photos within the platform. We’re hoping that people who have historic photos from grandparents and parents want to preserve the history of those photos and the context of those photos. Because one of the problems that happens is that a lot of these old photos end up in a garage sale somewhere. And then someone finds a cool photo but they no longer know the context of that photo anymore….One of the visions of the site, just like Google Street View, is to provide this amazing ability for people to experience a place when they’re not physically there. It would be amazing to recreate an entire street, like what Thirty-Seventh Street looked like in 1910 or 1930. And that’s our hope, to get enough photos to be able to stitch them together and create a street view back in time.
