Liz Gannes

Recent Posts by Liz Gannes

The Last Twitter Founder Leaves, and Obvious.com Is Reborn

Biz Stone, Evan Williams and Jason Goldman — the former core leadership team of Twitter — have restarted their Internet idea incubator Obvious Corporation.

Stone, a Twitter co-founder with the most longevity of anyone at the social media company, has left his full-time role there — where he led corporate culture efforts and was the go-to guy to joke about Twitter on late-night talk shows.

Stone said in a personal blog post today that he was relaunching Obvious Corporation, the incubator that shepherded Twitter out of the podcasting start-up Odeo and into an independent company.

Joining him to relaunch Obvious are familiar faces Williams — also a Twitter co-founder and its former CEO — and Goldman — former head of product at Twitter.

Just a year ago, these three were at the core of Twitter’s executive team, but the company is now led by CEO Dick Costolo.

Here’s an explanation from the relaunched Obvious.com:

Why are you doing this?
We are passionate about identifying problems that people can help solve through innovation on the Internet, and we enjoy collaborating on solutions.

What are you building?
We’re are not ready to discuss specifics except to say that our thesis is building systems that help people work together to improve their lives and the world.

Meanwhile, the third official Twitter co-founder, Jack Dorsey, who had previously left the company during a leadership shake-up with Williams in 2008, this year returned to lead product at Twitter, where he is executive chairman, though he is still CEO of his other start-up Square. Dorsey filled a role that had been vacant since Goldman left late last year.

Latest Video

View all videos »

Search »

There was a worry before I started this that I was going to burn every bridge I had. But I realize now that there are some bridges that are worth burning.

— Valleywag editor Sam Biddle