Evan Williams is a co-founder of Obvious, a company that has launched Twitter and Odeo. Previously he helped to create Blogger which was eventually sold to Google. Williams went on to form Obvious Corp in 2006 with Biz Stone. Together they launched the wildly succesfully Twitter service and retained ownership of Odeo until it was acquired in May 2007. He lives in San Francisco, California with his wife Sara Morishige and cat Moki.

1. Born: March 31, 1972 in Nebraska
2. Named (along with the Blogger team) "People of the Year" in 2004 by PC Magazine

"I think getting feedback from your community and adjusting to it is important. Those are the people we want to make happy, clearly. I think it’s really tricky knowing what you could be forever reacting to every whim. The especially tricky thing is that some of the more vocal members of the community are leaders and have big needs, but they turn out to be edge cases. I see a lot of companies, web companies, 2.0 sort of companies that attract early adopters. and they listen to them and get feedback from them. But then they kind of get sucked into pleasing these early adopters, and the early adopter is really on the next curve. And that becomes a conflict when you’re trying to reach a much more mainstream audience." Evan Williams

• Evhead: Will it fly? How to Evaluate a New Product Idea (December 16, 2007)