TED, an organization best known for its annual gathering of top thought leaders, launched a social discussion platform on its website today. The move is part of a larger effort to spread, as TED's motto goes, "ideas worth spreading" beyond the 1,300-attendee, five-day conference.

"TED Conversations" will be a question and answer forum similar to Stack Overflow or Quora, but with a few important differences. Conversations will take three forums: questions, ideas and debates. They'll also be assigned an expiration date between one day and two weeks from their start. (TED conference presentations also have time restrictions of 18 minutes.) Both of these features are intended to encourage thoughtful conversation and participation by leaders with tight schedules.

Which brings us to the third thing that TED hopes will set its platform apart — participation by TED thought leaders. Sometimes these leaders will be scheduled to host conversations. At launch, for instance, Seth Godin, game designer Jane McGonigal and Rhode Island School of Design President John Maeda will hold discussions.

Whether a discussion is launched by one of these thought leaders or a mere mortal, there is an option to link it to one of the TEDTalk videos that already draw about 15 million visits to the site each month. It's a way for website visitors to extend their interaction with the conference without attending.

"We curate a really strong stage program, but that’s only half of what attendees [at the physical conference] get," says June Cohen, executive producer of TED Media. "The other half is what they get out of the interactions with the other really engaged people who have just taken in the program with them."

TED has made other efforts to become more global. TEDTalks launched in 2006 to give the web access to the presentations at TED, and the nearly two-year-old TED Open Translation Project works to translate the talks for the vast audience of non-English speakers.

The new platform will contribute to this goal as well as be a source of revenue for the non-profit. TED Conversations launch partner, General Electric, will hold a conversation around sustainable energy solutions, which will inform GE’s Ecomagination Challenge. Director of Partnerships Ronda Carnegie said TED is open to similar partnerships with other brands in the future.







Image courtesy of iStockphoto, hiob