Twitter has taken the social networking world by storm since it’s release about two years ago.  Not only do new users continue to flock to the micro-blogging site daily, but Twitter has become a household name much like Google or Facebook.  If you’re wondering how such a site has been able to become so successful in such a short amount of time, then we have the post for you.  This week in the spotlight we take a look at entrepreneur Evan Williams, who founded the popular social networking platform known as Twitter.

Summary:

Name: Evan Williams
Age: 37
Location: California, USA
Claim to fame: Twitter (social media micro-blogging platform)
Initial cost: < $1000

How He Did It:

Evan was born and raised in Nebraska where he attended college for two years until he decided to leave school and pursue other interests full time.  After leaving school, Evan started working in various technology positions for small businesses and a few start-ups.  Evan later became a independent contractor, and then freelancer where he pursued opportunities for projects with both Hewitt Packard and Intel.  Evan founded Pyra Labs around 2000 where he developed Blogger, the first web application for managing blogs.  He later sold it to Google in 2003.  Evan left Google in 2004 to start Obvious Corp, which later produced Twitter.  Twitter became it’s own company in 2007 where Evan Williams now sits as the CEO.  Compete.com recently ranked Twitter as the third most used social network with 55 million visits each month.

Lessons Learned:

• Opportunity won’t always find you.  You need to be proactive and seek out your dreams.  (Evan worked many different places doing many different things before finding Twitter)
• Change is a good thing – It’s the only way you can continue to evolve and grow.
• Never be satisfied and never let failure get you down – try and try again (Evan went through a series of stepping stones prior to twitter.  The big payoff didn’t come with his first idea)
• Use your social network of contacts when you can to help you reach your goals
• Always try new things – One idea might lead to something else.

Did you miss last weeks spotlight? Check it out here: The Entrepreneur Spotlight: Mark Zuckerberg


Be on the lookout for our next entrepreneur spotlight article in this ongoing series. In the meantime, be sure to leave a comment and let me know what you think about the success of this week’s entrepreneur. Did you like this post? Useful example? User of the product or service? Thoughts? Take a minute and let us know!


Sources:
Media Guardian
Twitter CEO
Twitter Revolution
Origin of Blog
Twitter Inc
Twitter CEO
Social Networks