Twitter founder quits to focus on next big thing

After five years, the entrepreneur is ready to invent the nextinternet sensation

the co-founder and public face of Twitter, Biz Stone, is to ceasehis work with the micro-blogging company and team up with his formercolleagues in an attempt to invent the next big thing on theinternet.

The 37-year-old entrepreneur is restarting the company thatspawned Twitter five years ago - a venture called The Obvious Group -to experiment with making "systems that help people work together toimprove the world".

"It has come to my attention that the Twitter crew and itsleadership team have grown incredibly productive," Mr Stoneannounced on his personal blog. "I've decided that the mosteffective use of my time is to get out of the way until I'm calledupon to be of some specific use."

Explaining the decision to relaunch The Obvious Group, he said:"The possibility to reach and connect expansive numbers of peoplefundamentally changes the nature of what's possible when it comes tobuilding businesses on the internet."

There is expected to be no shortage of money available frominvestors who might want to back the company's new projects.Investors have bid up the value of Twitter itself to around $8bn(4.9bn) on private share-trading markets, despite it never havingturned a profit.