TED 2013 Opens With Speakers Curated From 14-Country Tour

As audiences and quality content creators find themselves more closely aligned than ever before, the Magnify.net video curation platform is becoming the technology of choice for leading organizations.

TED, the nonprofit devoted to "Ideas Worth Spreading," kicks off its flagship conference in Long Beach, Ca. This year the speaker selection process has undergone a dramatic and important change. They opened their curatorial process to new voices from around the world with the TED Talent Search. The 14-country six continent tour was designed to find speakers for the 2013 conference which was themed "The Young. The Wise. The Undiscovered."

The concept was to open-source the selection of speakers for TED 2013. The TED team set out to do a global search with feedback from around the world. The team selected the video curation platform Magnify.net to power the TED Global Talent Search.

"TED has been a remarkable leader in the field of content curation," said Magnify.net CEO Steven Rosenbaum. "What the TED team understands is that opening a process to audience input and feedback doesn't replace expert editorial and selection, it enhances it."

The Magnify.net Video Curation Platform is powering the video presentation, voting, and commenting for this new initiative. From now through August 31, people can view, rate and comment on the videos. TED will ultimately maintain curatorial control, though public ratings and feedback will play a key role in determining who takes the stage at TED 2013. A minimum of 20 of the 293 speakers and performers will receive invitations to TED 2013.

While voting has ended the site remains live and the public can visit talentsearch.ted.com to review all of the audition videos.

TED talent search events were held between April and June 2012 on six continents and in 14 cities: Amsterdam, Bangalore, Doha, Johannesburg, London, Nairobi, New York, Sao Paulo, Seoul, Shanghai, Sydney, Tokyo, Tunis and Vancouver.

Magnify.net powered the talent search website in conjunction with YouTube, which hosts the content. Magnify CEO Rosenbaum says that TED's leadership around community contributions and multi-level curation is a sign of things to come.

"We're seeing curation become part of the daily life of media companies, brands, even member organizations," said Rosenbaum. "TED's ability to balance openness with its exceptional focus on quality is an important indicator of how web video changes the way knowledge is created, shared, and filtered."