Evan Williams Speaker & Booking Information

Evan Williams is co-founder and chief executive of Twitter, the instant messaging service that allows users to post 140-character updates to the world via the web or their mobile phone. Last year we said it was the social networking phenomenon of the moment. It still is. Like all the best ideas, Twitter was a simple one when it was founded by Williams along with Jack Dorsey and Biz Stone four years ago – a website that enables people to tell their friends what they are doing. In many respects that is all it remains today. But Twitter has also become a powerful political and journalistic tool, a platform for protesters in Iran, campaigners bidding to overturn the Trafigura superinjunction, or people angry at the Daily Mail's treatment of the death of te former Boyzone star Stephen Gately. If it was not the Twitter election as some had predicted then the social networking site was still influential in feeding people's perception of the events that did dominate the campaign – the TV leaders' debates. "Journalists read the responses on Twitter to shape their take on the general election debates," said our panel. Such has been its influence as a forum for debate and mouthpiece of the masses that Stephen Fry – one of the platform's celebrity champions and fellow entrant in this year's MediaGuardian 100 – suggested the "Twinternet" had prompted a fundamental "shift in the very focus of democracy" and had the potential to "become the new fifth estate". So why Williams and not Stone, now Twitter's creative director, or Dorsey, its former chief executive who became chairman in 2008? Because Williams is Twitter's chief executive and, for many people, its public face. Plus, we try to avoid multiple entries in the MediaGuardian 100. A serial entrepreneur who grew up on a farm in Nebraska, Williams previously worked at Google, having co-founded the DIY blogging tool Blogger.com, which he sold to the search giant in 2003. San Francisco-based Twitter has yet to turn a profit but has received no shortage of funding, including a further $100m of investment last year that valued the company at $1bn. It rejected a $500m takeover bid from Facebook last year. Twitter's other high-profile users include Jonathan Ross, Barack Obama, whose team used Twitter during his presidential election campaign, and Demi Moore and her husband, Ashton Kutcher, who compared its creation to the invention of Morse code, the telephone or the personal computer. Twitter does not make its user statistics public but is said to have more than 100 million worldwide, far fewer than the 500 million people registered with Facebook. So why is Williams ahead of Facebook's founder and chief executive, Mark Zuckerberg, in this year's list? Because unlike Facebook, Twitter offers an instant, real-time take on global events. Plus, Zuckerberg's standing was hit by the privacy controversy that has engulfed his business in the past 12 months. Twitter has generated controversy of its own, sparking accusations that the so-called "Twitter mob" – or wisdom of the crowd, depending on your point of view – could be a force for bad as well as good. Williams denied that Twitter created a false sense of community. "It's not any less real than using the telephone to communicate," he said. "It's about humans connecting with each other, and often in ways that they couldn't before. It's the opposite of dehumanising as far as I'm concerned." Social networking sites come and go. What chance Twitter will be a fad? "The only reason Twitter itself would be a fad is if someone comes along and does it better," countered Williams. It shows no sign of happening just yet. Expect Williams, who moves up four places in this year's MediaGuardian 100, to climb higher still.