On: What We Can Learn From Mess (known as Craigslist)

Craigslist succeeded because there is an ecosystem of people that makes it useful. buyers/sellers, job hunters/head hunters and so on. The same reason eBay is successful.

But Craigslist beat others in establishing theirselves as the hub of that ecosystems; they didn't just buy the domain name and have all those groups of people there the next day.

I agree. first-mover advantage plays a big role as well.