John Battelle - John Battelle is an entrepreneur, journalist, professor, and author. Currently founder and chairman of Federated Media Publishing, he is also a founder and executive producer of conferences in the media, technology, communications, and entertainment industries as well as "band manager" with BoingBoing.net.
Previously, Battelle was founder, chairman, and CEO of Standard Media International (SMI), publisher of The Industry Standard and TheStandard.com. Prior to founding The Standard, Battelle was a co-founding editor of Wired magazine and Wired Ventures.
He is the author of The Search: How Google and Its Rivals Rewrote the Rules of Business and Transformed Our Culture (Portfolio, 2005).
Evan Williams - Evan Williams is chairman and chief product officer of Twitter, Inc. Previously, he was co-founder and CEO of Pyra Labs, who created Blogger in 1999. In 2003, Blogger was purchased by Google, where Williams worked as a product and engineering manager until late 2004.
Williams was raised on a farm in Nebraska and dropped out of college as a sophomore, prior starting his first Internet company in 1994.
Twitter co-founder Evan Williams talks with Federated Media's John Battelle at the Web 2.0 Summit about current trends on the Internet and the future of one of the most popular social web services online.
"When people come to Twitter, unless they have been evangelized by somebody, they often are confused. They end up following Senator McCain or Britney Spears." ==> Response
"Well that would confuse anyone..."