Biz Stone leaves Twitter
Biz Stone, co founder of Twitter, has decided to step away from the micro-blogging giant. Word is that internal turbulence was at the root of his departure. It seems like yet another twist in the growing plot that one article on Fortune says includes “secret board meetings, executive power struggles, a plethora of coaches and consultants, and disgruntled founders.”
In his blog, Stone says:
My work on Twitter has spanned more than half a decade and I will continue to work with the company for many years to come. During this time—especially lately, it has come to my attention that the Twitter crew and its leadership team have grown incredibly productive. I’ve decided that the most effective use of my time is to get out of the way until I’m called upon to be of some specific use.
Remaining on Twitter’s helm is CEO Dick Costolo. The current CEO stepped up after Williams — who was said to be focusing on product strategy. Twitter acquired Tweetdeck under Costolo’s leadership, snatching it up from UberMedia.
Stone’s departure from Twitter follows that of Greg Pass’, Twitter Chief Technology Officer, who left the company in May. No reason was given for Pass’ departure and his position was not filled.
Further on, Stone outlined his plans for the immediate future and that is picking up something he started before Twitter spread like wildfire:
As for the bulk of my time day-to-day, I’m thrilled to announce that Evan Williams, Jason Goldman and myself will be relaunching The Obvious Corporation as co-founders. Our plan is to develop new projects and work on solving big problems aligned along a simple mission statement: The Obvious Corporation develops systems that help people work together to improve the world. This is a dream come true!
Stone’s career started in 1999 with Xanga and in 2002, he started a microblogging service called “Sideblogger”. He joined the Blogger team at Google in 2003 where he said that his “new environment had everything I could possibly want and so much more.” It was at Google that he met Evan Williams and Jason Goldman.
When Williams left Google, Stone followed him and helped in starting up a company that eventually panned out. Williams eventually created Obvious, which Stone described as “a company to buy this failure back from the investors with his own money.” Goldman joined Stone and Williams in developing multiple projects under one company — being now accountable only to themselves.
This eventually led to the founding of Twitter in 2007 with Jack Dorsey, Williams and Stone.
Stone published two books about blogging, Blogging: Genius Strategies for Instant Web Content (New Riders, 2002) and Who Let The Blogs Out? (St Martins, 2004).
Twitter is now one of the world’s largest micro-blogging/social networking sites. It is estimated to have over 200 million users and is still growing. According to one article, the company is currently valued at over $ 7.7 Billion.
Paul Farol is a Filipino writer and blogger currently based in Manila. He is currently a media practitioner and is involved in community development projects in Northern and Southern Luzon, Philippines.