TEDTalk milestones
on the way to a billion views
-
The first 6 TED Talks launch
June 2006 (35,000 views to date)
A small team works together to post TED video on the web for the first time.
We launch with 6 videos with help from partners at iTunes, WNYC, VideoEgg, TypePad, Adobe, Feedburner and our first sponsor, BMW.
Watch the first six talks. They're still classics!
Al Gore on 15 ways to avert a climate crisis
David Pogue says "Simplicity sells"
Majora Carter’s tale of greening the ghetto
Ken Robinson asks, Do schools kill creativity?
Tony Robbins talks about why we do what we do
Hans Rosling shows the best stats you’ve ever seen
-
TED Talks on iTunes
June 2006 / 45,000 views to date
Online video in 2006 was synonymous with iTunes. So when the TED Talks podcast launched, it launched on iTunes.
We now have a range of TED podcasts, by topic and language, not to mention our "TED Studies" on iTunes U. But the original TEDTalks podcast is still available ...
-
TED Talks channel launches on YouTube
July 2006 / 145,000 views to date
We partnered with YouTube right away to bring TED Talks where viewers already lived. You can still see our vintage first-generation titles on the earliest talks, such as:
Majora Carter's knockout talk "Greening the Ghetto" was the 4th talk ever.
Tony Robbins, who's been among the top three most popular TED Talks on YouTube since the channel launched.
-
TED Talks hit 1 million views!
September 2006 / 1,000,000 views to date
We start releasing TED Talks in larger file sizes for the new video iPod.
Classics released this month include Dan Gilbert's Surprising science of happiness and David Deutsch: Chemical scum that dream of distant quasars.
-
Jeff Han's demo hits 1 million views
January 2007 / 3,000,000 views to date
Watch the breakthrough demo of pinch-zoom and other multi-touch-screen techniques. It took place in the spring of 2006 -- a year before the 2007 iPhone launch.
The talk is still analyzed as "the" classic tech demo…and was played in court during the 2012 Apple / Samsung trial.
-
TED.com relaunches as a website focused on Ideas Worth Spreading
April 2007 / 6,300,000 views to date
Read the press release -- with throwback screen shots.
The New York Times covered it.
And we launched with the first 100 talks on this list, which is now almost 1400 strong.
-
Jill Bolte Taylor gives a TED Talk about her stroke and recovery
February 2008 / 32,000,000 views to date
Watch the talk (and try not to cry); it's a classic.
Taylor goes on Oprah to promote stroke safety and personal growth.
Her book becomes a best-seller.
The talk and book even inspire a ballet!
-
TED Talks hits 100 million views
February 2009 / 100,000,000 views to date
It's a pivotal moment in TED history, just weeks before the TED Fellows program, the TEDx program and the Open Translation Project launch.
And one of our most memorable demos took place this month as well: At TED2009, MIT's Pattie Maes and Pranav Mistry reveal their SixthSense demo, which made augmented reality look easy.
-
TED Fellows launches
February 2009 / 104,000,000 views to date
After a pilot project at TEDGlobal in Tanzania, Tom Rielly launches the TED Fellows program to cultivate young thinkers and doers with ideas worth spreading, like these:
Marcin Jakubowski's Global Construction Set was our first 1M view talk from a TED Fellow.
Candy Chang's "Before I die I want to …" brought tears -- and inspired action.
At TEDIndia, Jane Chen introduced her simple, revolutionary infant incubator.
-
The first TEDx event takes place
March 23, 2009 / 115,000,000 views to date
TEDxUSC, at the University of Southern California, is the very first independently organized TED event. There have now been more than 5,279 events in 148 countries and 50 languages!
Organizer Krisztina "Z" Holly, working with Lara Stein and Chris Anderson, tells her story.
The first TEDx talk to appear on TED.com was Jane Poynter, talking about her life in BioSphere II.
Watch 6 TEDx talks that became phenomena.
-
TED Open Translation Project launches
May 2009 / 115,000,000 views to date
Volunteers power this program! To date, 9000+ translators have produced 30,000 translations in 90+ languages. Transcripts and subtitles appear on every video.
Isabel Allende's talk made a splash in Spanish, with tens of thousands of views.
Sarah Kaminsky is the first non-English talk to appear on TED.com (with English subtitles).
Check out the 1190 talks translated into Arabic.
-
Bill Gates releases a mosquito!
March 2010 / 135,000,000 views to date
In one of the first TED Talks to make national news as it was happening, Bill Gates unleashes live mosquitoes from the stage at TED. (P.S. No one at TED knew he was going to do this.)
Here's the famous talk.
The moment even inspired a Flash game, sadly defunct, called Fever Beater.
-
Brene Brown redefines vulnerability at TEDxHouston
October 2010 / 352,000,000 views to date
It was clear to the audience that this was going to be a landmark talk. On the TEDx Blog, the organizer writes: "As soon as I was in there, I picked up on a sense in the room that there was something magical happening."
Brown's TEDxHouston talk has been viewed 7.8 million times.
Her new book was an instant best-seller.
-
TED Talks iPad app launches
October 2010 / 352,000,000 views to date
The still-rather-new iPad emerges as a perfect platform for watching TED Talks.
Over the intervening two years we've added many user-requested features, including Airplay.
And created apps for the iPhone and for Android platforms as well.
-
TED app takes the spotlight in iPad ad campaign
November 2010 / 368,000,000 views to date
We admit it: We were quite excited to see TED's app featured during Glee!
…and it was fun to see ads on the street in New York City.
-
1 million fans on Facebook
May 2011 / 479,000,000 views to date
TED's mighty Facebook page, now 2.5 million strong...
… was first launched as a simple fan page, then donated to us by TEDxRutgers organizer Taha.
It's been a place to chat, argue and share ever since.
-
Sir Ken Robinson's talk reaches 10 million views
October 2011 / 593,000,000 views to date
Sir Ken Robinson's now-classic talk "Do schools kill creativity?" was one of the first 6 TED Talks and remains the most popular.
Watch the talk; change the way you think about school.
His followup talk, on finding your calling. Just a witty and on-point as the first.
And who doesn't like an animated version?
-
Clay Shirky gives a flash TED Talk against SOPA/PIPA
January 2012 / 664,000,000 views to date
The talk gave context around legislation that was pending in the U.S. Congress. Yes, this is the kind of thing Clay Shirky can pull together in a weekend.
Our blog post from that day: Why we're not going dark.
Stars like Phonte tweet about Clay's talk.
-
TED Talks premiere on Netflix
March 2012 / 726,000,000 views to date
Packaged into shows like "Rad Invention" and "Space Trek", TED Talks premiere on Netflix instant streaming service.
-
Android app launches
March 2012 / 726,000,000 views to date
The TED app for Android debuts, with a design that works seamlessly across 1100+ devices.
In August, for version 1.2, we roll out a key new feature on this platform: subtitles.
-
TED Radio Hour premieres on NPR
April 2012 / 775,000,000 views to date
Developed in creative partnership with NPR, the TED Radio Hour brings ideas worth spreading to the airwaves (and podcasts).
Clay Shirky and Eric Whitacre offer fascinating updates to their classic TED Talks in the episode "The Power of Crowds."
Meanwhile, offline, Nigeria's RoyalFM is the first station in Africa to carry the TED Radio Hour… reaching 12 million listeners who don't have reliable broadband access.
-
Hans Rosling's 9th talk posts on TED.com
May 2012 / 821,000,000 views to date
After changing the way we thought about statistics (and the developing world) with his first TED Talk in 2006, Hans went on to deliver 8 more blockbuster talks with his signature style and ever-changing ways to visualize.
His 9th talk, "religions and babies" posed the question: How does religion affect sex?" for a mostly Muslim audience in Doha, Qatar at the TEDxSummit.
His classic 2006 talk.
-
Non-English talks appear on iTunes
June 2012 / 920,000,000 views to date
Thanks to the prolific efforts of our volunteers worldwide, the TED Talks podcasts become available in seven subtitled languages: Arabic, Chinese, French, German, Japanese, Korean and Spanish.
-
TED Talks premiere on China's YouKu
July 2012 / 979,000,000 views to date
TED Talks premiere (with Chinese subtitles, of course) on YouKu, the largest video website in China.
-
TED Talks hit 1 billion views
November 2012 / 1,100,000,000 views to date
On Tuesday, Nov. 13, we're celebrating a billion views -- across TED.com, YouTube, Netflix, iTunes, YouKu, radio and many more platforms.
We may never know who watched THE billionth TED Talk. It might have been you ...