4 ms·
"For the ones that make it, success often comes down to a lot of luck." (For example, YouTube was worth way more than other video sharing sites; Twitter had mor
by austenallred 13y ago
"For the ones that make it, success often comes down to a lot of luck." (For example, YouTube was worth way more than other video sharing sites; Twitter had more impressive people joining it than other status-posting apps.)
Saying "there were multiple companies in once space, so the one that was successful was the lucky one" seems awfully hand-wavy to me. There could be dozens of reasons why some succeeded and some failed.
- normloman 13y agoTrue. On the other hand, there's a human tendency to find explanations where none exist. Perhaps Youtube was just at the right place and right time. But that won't stop people from attributing Youtube's success to some minor feature it had that competing sites lacked.
- pmarca 13y agoIt's very important for a lot of people, particularly people who can't do what Jack/Ev/Noah can do and did, to believe that it's all luck.
- wallflower 13y ago> YouTube was worth way more than other video sharing sites I believe YouTube was the first site that solved the fairly difficult problem of embedding video in your blog and sharing video by taking advantage of the then-new Flash media server and doing some clever transcoding of videos to Flash video format without having the servers melt down. Prior to YouTube, you had to download proprietary ActiveX plugins to run video (RealPlayer). They were in the right place at the right time and had the right technology to use.