I have to disagree a bit with the idea that no-one thought social networking was going to be big. Were you not around for Friendster? Amongst my college friends it was huge. The problem was that it didn't scale. I logged on frequently until logging-on became too painful. It was the first site I used to reconnect with lost friends, and that was valuable to me.
Apparently Google also saw the value in Friendster, as they offered $30 million for the company, which Friendster turned down.
I'm not sure that being late to the game is as bad as many people would like to believe either. Implementation is king. I yahooed before I ever googled, had many email accounts before gmail, talked on my computer before skype, and on and on.
I agree with you though about Twitter. Total surprise.
Agree about social networking -- it was around in early forms, soon after the web launched: PlanetAll.com (1996; acq by Amazon for $100mm in 1998) and SixDegrees.com (1997; acq for $125mm in 2000).
Before that, my friends were on LiveJournal and after Friendster was a little site called MySpace.
I've been trying to separate startups into ones you could do customer discovery for before you build the app and ones where you have to see it to get it. I think Facebook falls in the first category and Twitter falls in the second category but I'm not exactly sure why.
Agree completely that implementation is key. Look at all the open source voting sites. Anyone can start one but Reddit is popular. Why? The way they do things.
Apparently Google also saw the value in Friendster, as they offered $30 million for the company, which Friendster turned down.
I'm not sure that being late to the game is as bad as many people would like to believe either. Implementation is king. I yahooed before I ever googled, had many email accounts before gmail, talked on my computer before skype, and on and on.
I agree with you though about Twitter. Total surprise.