That many competitors did exist - Bebo, Orkut, MySpace goes against the luck/timing story. I think what Mark Zuckerberg hit on is that people like to belong to

That many competitors did exist - Bebo, Orkut, MySpace goes against the luck/timing story. I think what Mark Zuckerberg hit on is that people like to belong to an exclusive club - so Facebook started out behaving like a night club to give the platform a feeling (now forgotten) of sophistication.