I always saw Facebook's enormous success as very much "right place, right time". I feel that 2007 was a massive shift in internet consumption habits/demographi

I always saw Facebook's enormous success as very much "right place, right time". I feel that 2007 was a massive shift in internet consumption habits/demographic. Prior to this, it was still relatively young/geeky - Mum and Dad would use it for e-mail and work research, but not much else. Then the iPhone came along, and suddenly, your average Joe and Jane were flocking to the internet on their mobile devices. It was no longer geeky, it was mainstream. Facebook opened the gates to the (non-university) public right around the same time, which meant they were perfectly positioned to capitalize on this colossal new demographic of internet media consumers. I'm not saying that they wouldn't have built a successful social network without the iPhone. But I do think it would have just been another Myspace. Same goes for Twitter, mind you.