Twitter founders return to roots, relaunch Obvious

Twitter co-founders Biz Stone and Evan Williams plan to revive Obvious, the company they conceived years ago as a technology project incubator that eventually spawned Twitter.

Stone and Williams will continue to advise Twitter on strategic matters, but devote the lions' share of their time to The Obvious Corporation, Stone told the Aspen Ideas Conference at the ski resort.

The pair, along with others such as Jack Dorsey, who now runs payments service Square, created the four-year-old website that allows users to send 140-character messages across the Internet. It has grown into a microblogging phenomenon used by celebrities and heads of state alike, hailed at times as a crucial tool in promoting the free flow of information.

Neither Stone nor Williams told conference attendees explicitly what they intended with Obvious, apart from saying that they were excited about building projects that will improve people's lives.

"All the biggest ideas are obvious in retrospect," said Williams. "If we get as lucky as Twitter, that would be great."

Dick Costolo replaced Williams as Twitter's CEO in October, a move Silicon Valley sources have said re-focused the microblogging sensation on monetization, or translating its fast-growing pool of users into revenue.

"The Twitter crew and its leadership team have grown incredibly productive. I've decided that the most effective use of my time is to get out of the way until I'm called upon to be of some specific use," Stone said in a blog post.

"Our plan is to develop new projects and work on solving big problems aligned along a simple mission statement: The Obvious Corporation develops systems that help people work together to improve the world."

"This is a dream come true!" Stone said.