The College of Journalism and Mass Communications is all atwitter because Evan Williams, the founder and chief executive of Twitter, will be in Andersen Hall to speak with students, faculty and staff. Twitter is a growing social networking and micro-blogging service that enables Internet users to send and read other users’ 140-character updates known as tweets. <p>

This is your chance to get involved: <p>

1) Come to room 15 in Andersen Hall to listen to Mr. Williams.<p>

2) “Tweet” a question to Mr. Williams on Twitter <http://twitter.com/Unl_CoJMC>; (You must be or become a Twitter user.)<p>

3) Or tune in to NewsNetNebraska <http://newsnetnebraska.org>; the college’s news Web site, where the event will be streamed live for the public on the Internet from the J.C. Seacrest Lecture Hall.<p>

More about Williams <p>
Williams grew up on a farm outside Clarks and moved to Columbus during his senior year of high school, graduating from Columbus High School in 1990. He entered UNL that fall and attended through his sophomore year. He returned to Nebraska in 1993 and started his first Internet company in Lincoln in 1994. He later co-founded Pyra Labs to make project management software. In 1999, a note-taking feature spun off as Blogger, one of the first Web applications for creating and managing blogs. <p>

Pyra was eventually acquired by Google and Williams left Google in October 2004 to co-found Odeo. In late 2006, he co-founded Obvious Corp. with Biz Stone and other former Odeo employees. Obvious has acquired all previous properties of Odeo, including Odeo and Twitter, another project started by Williams. <p>

BusinessWeek magazine in 2008 named Williams one of the 25 Most Influential People on the Web, saying: “Williams has a knack for figuring out how people want to keep in touch – even before they seem to know it themselves.”