Launched in 1984 as a one-time event, the TED conference (it stands for technology, education and design) grew to a four-day conference in Monterey, Calif., before being purchased by publisher Chris Anderson in 2001, who shifted the annual conference to Long Beach.
Anderson added a sister conference to reach an international audience in 2005. In 2009, the organization began granting licenses to third parties who could organize their own community-level TEDx events. Today, there are five TEDx events organized every day in more than 130 countries.
Despite that growth, it wasn’t until June 2006 that TED speakers were introduced to a much larger global audience through the launch of TED.com. The site posted six talks to test the market. Six months later, it had about 40 presentations and had attracted 3 million views.
In November of last year, TED.com presentations reached more than 1 billion views. The talks are viewed online 1.5 million times per day. The videos are translated into up to 90 languages, and 17 new viewings of TED presentations start every second of every day.
“It used to be 800 people getting together once a year; now it’s about a million people a day watching TED Talks online,” says Anderson. “The conference is still the engine, but the website is the amplifier that takes the ideas to the world.”
