Indeed, it's difficult to easily imagine a platform that requires enough complexity to facilitate a relatively free market ecosystem where third-parties voluntarily integrate in reciprocal relationship; it's not straight-forward, not obvious, perhaps will be obvious in hindsight once the working model is clearly defined.

Re: "FB wasn't first-to-market"

What platform then first connected close peer groups via requiring a university/college email address for login, for the platform to then quickly associated those users with each other relevancy wise - leading to the network effects that quickly launched Facebook?

(Zuckerberg knowing that there only needed to be one such platform, why he lied to/misled the ConnectU twins who were actively paying him to develop ConnectU - to which he launched TheFacebook first to get an advantage)