Quotes from Evan Williams

I used to tweet about the most mundane things - like 'I just bought a soya latte' - but now I try and make it a bit more interesting.

I mistrust anyone... if they're saying, 'Well, that market wants this,' and you're not part of that market.

People are fans of Dunkin' Donuts. They have a relationship with the company, they go there every day. Dunkin' Donuts is using Twitter to communicate with those people. There are people who are finding value in that. There's thousands of people, I don't know how many thousands now, following Dunkin' Donuts.

Twitter isn't a social network, it's an information network.

Twitter is a very easy way to keep in touch.

The only reason Twitter itself would be a fad is if someone comes along and does it better.

People want to do good things, they just need a prod sometimes, and what Twitter and other technologies that connect people are showing us is that if you make it a little easier for people then you will enable them to do what they want to do, to help people out, to form groups and do good.

In the best cases, Twitter makes people smarter and faster and more efficient.

'What is Twitter?' has always been a tough question to answer.

I think Twitter will be a fundamental part of how people interact with their government.

I believe that companies that are independent are more competitive, ultimately.

What the Internet is great at is building networks.

Every time you start a company - and I've started five or six - you have the opportunity to screw up in whole new ways.

My brother was the consummate Nebraska boy - the football star who went to the university, was president of his fraternity, hunted with my dad all the time.

I was broke for more than 10 years. I remember staying up all night one night at my first company and looking in couch cushions the next morning for some change to buy coffee.

I think there's few cases in history where the C.E.O. steps down and is also the founder and reports to someone and that works.

Failure of your company is not failure in life. Failure in your relationships is.

Every major communication tool on the Internet has spam and abuse problems. All email services, blogging services and social networks have to dedicate a significant amount of resources and time to fighting abuse and protecting their users.

I suspect there's a lot of validity to the premise that big companies aren't going to attract entrepreneurial talent.

Anything I've done that really worked happened because, either by sheer will or a lack of options, I was incredibly focused on one problem.

Most of the great businesses of our time have experimented. Like Google.

If you look at the Internet, the vast majority of start-ups are not successful. But the ones that are, are very very successful. So you can't point to the unsuccessful ones and say, 'There's no hope for this field.' It's just that they had the wrong idea or they had bad execution.

When I meet with the founders of a new company, my advice is almost always, 'Do fewer things.' It's true of partnerships, marketing opportunities, anything that's taking up your time. The vast majority of things are distractions, and very few really matter to your success.

Unfortunately, 'climate' has become a dirty word - obviously in politics, but even to some degree in my world, in venture capital. People hesitate if they see something that's purported to be green. That's not a reason to invest for many people.