TED is dedicated to ideas worth spreading. And that leaves many wondering exactly which ideas have been spread the most widely in the six years that TEDTalks videos have been available online. Here, a list of the 20 most-watched talks on all the platforms we track: TED.com, YouTube, iTunes, embed and download, Hulu and more, as of November 2012.
From education to brain function to inspiring messages to techno-possibilities, this list represents quite a breadth of topics.
- Sir Ken Robinson says schools kill creativity (2006): 14,850,200 views
- Jill Bolte Taylor‘s stroke of insight (2008): 11,225,783
- Pranav Mistry on the thrilling potential of SixthSense (2009): 9,897,347
- David Gallo‘s underwater astonishments (2007): 8,204,051
- Pattie Maes and Pranav Mistry demo SixthSense (2009): 7,747,690
- Tony Robbins asks Why we do what we do (2006): 7,564,235
- Simon Sinek on how great leaders inspire action (2010): 7,539,516
- Brene Brown talks about the power of vulnerability (2010): 5,861,510
- Steve Jobs on how to live before you die (2005): 5,444,022
- Daniel Pink on the surprising science of motivation (2009): 5,534,123
- Hans Rosling shows the best stats you’ve ever seen (2006): 5,249,928
- Elizabeth Gilbert on nurturing your creative genius (2009): 5,020,869
- Arthur Benjamin does mathemagic (2005): 4,951,918
- Mary Roach on 10 things you didn’t know about orgasm (2009): 4,793,334
- Dan Gilbert asks: Why are we happy? (2004): 4,759,217
- Keith Barry does brain magic (2004): 4,475,303
- Stephen Hawking asks big questions about the universe (2008): 4,470,236
- Johnny Lee shows Wii Remote hacks for educators (2008): 3,997,174
- Jeff Han demos his breakthrough multi-touchscreen (2006): 3,982,775
- Barry Schwartz explores the paradox of choice (2005): 3,836,350
Compare and contrast how the 2012 list of the most popular talks stacks up to the 2011 list, written on the fifth birthday of TEDTalks videos.
Note: This post was updated November 8, 2012.
































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andrew forsyth commented on Aug 22 2012
At least weight these by years since release, in which case you’d get
1 Vijay Kumar
2 Pranav Mistry
3 Simon Sinek
4 Jill Bolte Taylor‘s
5 Pattie Maes and Pranav Mistry
6 Brene Brown
7 Sir Ken Robinson
8 David Gallo‘s
9 Daniel Pink
10 Elizabeth Gilbert
11 Mary Roach
12 Tony Robbins
13 Stephen Hawking
14 Johnny Lee
15 Hans Rosling
16 Steve Jobs
17 Arthur Benjamin
18 Jeff Han
19 Dan Gilbert
20 Keith Barry
Grace Rodriguez commented on Aug 23 2012
Hi Andrew! When you weight them by year, do you use the date of publication on TED.com, or date of availability online (on any site), period? And then, do you take into account the size of the actual audience it’s originally broadcast to (potentially gauged by the page’s unique views at the time of publication), as well as the audience’s (unique viewers) growth over time? If you’re going granular and weighting TED’s list, all of these considerations (and probably more I can’t think of right now) seem worthy of inclusion in the “weighting” calculation.
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