Facebook (launch Feb 2004) was founded after Myspace (launch Aug 2003), which was founded after Friendster (2002). So there was certainly competition.<p>Was it &#x27;worthy competition&#x27;? Hard to say without hindsight bias (only the winners 10 years later were &#x27;worthy&#x27;), but I doubt Mark Zuckerberg or the Google founders felt there was no worthy competition. It seems fairly clear to me that Facebook (and Google) succeeded because they made better decisions (on average) at a gazillion small decision points, not because they had some great idea that no-one else had thought of.