It struck me the other day that most of the great internet companies and services which have seen massive success in recent years were in many ways a result of coincidental evolution rather than by prior design. That is to say few of them started off life how we know them today and that most came from small groups or individuals rather than massive corporations. Here are a few examples to name but a few: Flickr was originally built as part of an online multiplayer game Facebook started life as a student information directory at Harvard Twitter began as an internal project at a company doing something completely different YouTube came about when the founders couldn’t find an easy way to share videos Some…