TED Conference, price and attendance
Streaming content online isn’t the same as being there. Watching the presentations is only part of the experience; an equal part is mingling with other attendees, who are often of the same caliber as those on stage. Come for the talks, stay for the hallway conversations. Plus there‘s the allure of seeing it first. A ticket to TED isn‘t devalued by delayed access to the talks; if anything each tickerst¡€he t is worth more now that people know what they‘re missing. In 2006, the first year TEDTalks were available to anyone with a Web connection, the cost of one ticket was $4,400. By 2008, the price had jumped to $6,000 (double what it was in 1999). Granted the price hike included DVDs and special mailings for members, but let‘s face it, the ticket is the real incentive. Last year, a ticket was auctioned off on eBay for charity and sold for $33,850. Sure the auction included a few ―perks,‖ like coffee with eBay founder Pierre Omidyar and a lunch date with actress Meg Ryan. But then again, regular TED attendees might do the same; both luminaries are regulars. As demand for tickets grows, so does attendance. Since 1998, attendance at TED has nearly tripled, rising by 10 percent each year. In fact, 2008 was the only year in which attendance did not increase. The reason? The venue in Monterey was simply too small to fit any additional people. In 2009, three years after TEDTalks started broadcasting for free, the conference moved to a theater in southern California with double the capacity.
But Google wasn‘t done. Indeed, it had only just begun its march to use free to enter and compete in any market where software and information economics could disrupt old businesses and create new ones.