Stop Online Piracy Act is a bill that was introduced in the U.S. House of Representatives in October 2011 by Lamar Smith (R-TX). This Act would allow the Department of Justice and copyright holders to seek court orders against websites accused of copyright infringement that would prevent online ad networks and payment facilitators from doing business with those websites. Opponents in this bill believe that this is Internet censorship. Google co-founder Sergey Brin, Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey, PayPal co-founder Elon Musk, and Yahoo! co-founder Jerry Yang oppose the bill. Their letter will appear as a paid ad in The New York Times, The Washington Post, and other newspapers.
Twitter co-founders Biz Stone and Evan Williams have announced a new project called Lift. Lift is expected to be a new application that will unlock the human potential, whatever that means. This project will be under the company Obvious Corporation, which was founded by Williams several years ago.
Biz Stone, the co-founder of Twitter who recently stepped away from the company to relaunch Obvious, has taken a role as strategic advisor at Spark Capital. According to Mashable, startups Spark Capital has invested in include Twitter, Tumblr, Foursquare, Boxee, Kik and Stack Exchange. Stone also runs the Biz & Livia Stone Foundation and is a strategic advisor at AOL.
Biz Stone, Evan Williams and Jason Goldman, men responsible for Twitter, plan to re-start their former company The Obvious Corporation. Obvious was a company they formed prior to Twitter’s fame, and abandoned in favor of focusing on Twitter. The reborn Obvious will, in Stone’s words, “help people work together to improve the world.” What that means, exactly, is unclear, but it sounds like it will be a source of innovative products. All three have stepped back or resigned from Twitter to return focus to The Obvious Corporation. [TechCrunch]
BusinessInsider.com did a thorough interview with Noah Glass. Glass worked at Odeo before the idea for Twitter even came up at that company. Glass was fired from Odeo, the former parent company of Twitter back in 2006. Glass was a co-founder of Odeo, who had an investor that eventually became CEO Evan Williams. Odeo was a podcasting start-up company that faced immense competition from iTunes. Williams told everyone at Odeo to come up with a different idea.
Biz Stone recently did an interview with Howard Stern. During the interview, Stone discussed how Facebook co-founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg proposed a buy-out for Twitter back in 2008.
Biz Stone stopped by the Conan O’Brien show to discuss the 5th anniversary of Twitter. Conan started off the interview by congratulation Stone on the 5 year anniversary. Stone pointed out that Twitter was often referred to as the “Seinfeld of the Internet” as in, it is a “website about nothing.” Stone took that as a compliment since he loves that show and it was very profitable. Check out the video above of the interview.
AOL, Inc. (NYSE:AOL) has hired Twitter co-founder Biz Stone as the “social impact” strategic adviser for the company. This will help with the integration of The Huffington Post into AOL. Stone will help AOL launch cause-based initiatives like helping people volunteer in communities. Stone will also be developing a video series for AOL that is related to philanthropy. AOL has also hired former New York Times editor John Montorio and former MSNBC analyst Howard Fineman. [WSJ]