Biz Stone, Founder of Twitter at Columbia College Chicago

Biz Stone is co-founder of Twitter, a real-time, one-to-many network that is changing the way people communicate around the world. Previously, Stone helped build other popular social media services Xanga, Blogger, and Odeo. After launching the journaling service Xanga in 2000, he went on to publish two books about the origins and social significance of blogging.

In 2003, Google invited Stone to join a recently acquired Blogger.com team at its Silicon Valley headquarters in a full-time, senior role. Stone helped re-launch the service and grow Blogger significantly worldwide. He left Google in 2005 to rejoin the startup world.

Stone, 35, is a native of Boston, Massachusetts, and teaches an annual master class at Oxford's Saïd Business School. In the fall of 2008, he debated and won at Oxford Union against the proposition, "The Problems of Tomorrow Are Bigger Than the Entrepreneurs of Today" along with his esteemed teammates, including Reid Hoffman, founder of LinkedIn.

Serving as an advisor to startups such as answer community Fluther.com, travel service Trazzler.com (which he co-founded), content encouragement service Plinky.com, and the non-profit organization Justgive.org, among others, allows Stone to share much of what he has learned over the past decade.