There are 1,200 TED Talks online that have been viewed collectively more than 800,000,000 times.

Cohen explained that the widespread use of social media naturally played a part in this process.

“Online users are exquisitely vulnerable to distraction,” Cohen said.
With a rise in mobile, TED embraced the trends of its community and purposely designed its online talks to be optimized for the small screen, cut long introductions and started videos strong.

TED also made sure videos were framed close to the speaker’s face. That allows mobile phone viewers to see the emotion of what’s being communicated.

TED videos can also be watched through many devices, embedded, downloaded as free podcast, etc. By embracing open (free) models it aims to reduce the barriers between the ideas and its intended audience.