“There were 17,000 YouTubes before YouTube”

Sure, there were 1700 YouTubes before YouTube and yeah, the YouTube we know and use today just happened to make it due to a serendipitous combination of "execution, focus, timing and luck."

I have an idea for Twitter that's better than Twitter. I have the focus, I have the execution plan - I just need the luck and the timing. I'm willing to join forces with an Irish co-founder for the former. I'm willing to keep probing and pushing until I achieve the latter. Now, is there anybody in the house willing to throw their multi-million dollars at me?

I was hoping to read the story of how Twitter managed to fill the niche that was being slowly created by long blogs and short attention spans. The timing part wasn't serendipitous, either. IIRC, Twitter spent a year in the shadows before it really took off. I'm sure someone can structure the YouTube story in a similar timeline.

In other words, rather than ambiguously stating these four (relatively) 'oft-quoted' factors for success, I was hoping the author would explain how the serendipitous combination actually came about. And if anyone feels inspired by the authors post, I have a bridge in San Fransisco I would like to sell to you. It's not all that new but it works great!

I think Vine is a pretty good example of this. I'm pretty sure every hacker in the world who heard of Instagram being sold to Facebook thought to himself, "If it works for photo, why don't we just make a video version?" Vine went and did it--and did it well.