Popular Apps With Unexpected Origins
Your phone probably holds a dozen apps you use every day without thinking twice about where they came from. Most origin stories sound straightforward enough—someone had an idea for a specific purpose, built it, and that’s what you’re using now. But dig a little deeper and the real stories get strange.
The app you’re scrolling through right now started as something completely different. The messaging platform your team relies on began as a failed video game project.
That photo-sharing service? It was supposed to help you check in at whiskey bars. Companies pivot all the time, but these transformations went so far that the original concepts became unrecognizable.
Instagram Started as a Whiskey Check-In App
Kevin Systrom built Burbn in 2010 as a location-based app where people could check in at places, make plans, and share photos. The whiskey enthusiast designed it around his own interests—specifically, bourbon.
But the app tried to do too much. Users ignored most features and only cared about posting photos with filters.
Systrom and co-founder Mike Krieger stripped everything away except photo-sharing and a few filters. They renamed it Instagram and launched it in October 2010.
Within two hours, the servers crashed from too many sign-ups. Facebook bought it 18 months later for one billion dollars.
YouTube Was Supposed to Be a Dating Site
The three PayPal employees who founded YouTube in 2005 originally envisioned a video dating platform. You’d upload a video describing yourself and what you wanted in a partner.
The site’s tagline was “Tune In, Hook Up.” Nobody uploaded dating videos.
The founders realized people wanted to share any video content, not just dating profiles. They opened it up to all videos, and within months, the platform exploded.
Google purchased YouTube in 2006 for $1.65 billion.
Slack Emerged from a Failed Video Game
Stewart Butterfield’s company Tiny Speck spent years developing Glitch, a multiplayer online game. The game launched in 2011 but never found its audience.
The company shut it down in 2012. But the team had built an internal communication tool to coordinate their work on the game.
That tool worked better than the game itself. They pivoted completely, refining the messaging platform and launching Slack in 2013.
Within a year, it had tens of thousands of daily users.
Twitter Began as a Podcasting Platform
Odeo launched in 2005 as a podcasting platform where people could find and subscribe to podcasts. Then Apple added podcasting to iTunes, and Odeo became obsolete almost overnight.
The company held a hackathon where employees pitched new ideas. Jack Dorsey proposed a service where people could share short status updates with groups.
The idea evolved into Twitter, which the company officially launched in 2006. Odeo was sold, and Twitter became its own entity.
Pinterest Wasn’t About Inspiration Boards
Ben Silbermann and his team created Tote in 2009 as a mobile shopping app. You could browse products from your favorite retailers and save them in collections.
The app looked great but had one massive problem—mobile commerce barely existed yet. Nobody wanted to buy things on their phones.
Users loved collecting items but never purchased anything. Silbermann noticed people enjoyed the curating aspect, so he stripped out the shopping functionality and focused on visual collections.
Pinterest launched in 2010 as a place to collect and share images of things that interested you.
Flickr Came from an Online Game
Ludicorp built Game Neverending in 2002, a massively multiplayer online game with social elements. The game featured a photo-sharing tool that let players exchange images within the game world.
The photo-sharing feature worked far better than the game. The company recognized this and extracted the tool into its own product, launching Flickr in 2004.
Yahoo acquired it a year later. Game Neverending was shut down permanently.
PayPal Started with Cryptography on Palm Pilots
Max Levchin, Peter Thiel, and their team founded Confinity in 1998 to develop cryptography software for handheld devices. They created a digital wallet that let people beam money between Palm Pilots using infrared ports.
The Palm Pilot payment system didn’t catch on. The company shifted focus to email-based money transfers for online auctions.
This worked. After merging with X.com and beating out competitors, PayPal became the dominant online payment platform.
eBay bought it in 2002 for $1.5 billion.
Nokia Made Paper Before Phones
Nokia’s roots go back to 1865 when Fredrik Idestam opened a wood pulp mill in Finland. For over a century, Nokia manufactured paper products, rubber goods including tires and boots, and various industrial materials.
The company entered electronics in the 1960s, first making military radio equipment and then consumer electronics. Nokia produced its first car phone in 1982 and mobile phone in 1987.
By the 1990s, it had abandoned all other product lines to focus exclusively on mobile devices.
Nintendo Sold Playing Cards for Decades
Fusajiro Yamauchi founded Nintendo in 1889 to produce handmade playing cards called hanafuda. The company dominated the Japanese playing card market for generations.
Nintendo tried various businesses over the next century, including a taxi service, instant rice, and a love hotel chain. Most failed. The company found its footing with toys in the 1960s, then electronic games in the 1970s.
The Famicom console launched in 1983, establishing Nintendo as a video game powerhouse.
Groupon Was an Activism Platform
Andrew Mason created The Point in 2007 as a social action platform. The site helped people organize campaigns and raise money for causes.
Users could create “tipping points”—fundraising goals that only processed payments if enough people contributed. The activism platform gained little traction.
But Mason noticed a Chicago pizza restaurant running a promotion through the site. He realized the tipping point mechanism worked perfectly for group buying deals.
Groupon spun off from The Point in 2008 and grew explosively.
Yelp Started as Automated Email Recommendations
Jeremy Stoppelman and Russel Simmons built Yelp in 2004 to send automated restaurant recommendations to users via email. You’d tell the system what types of food you liked, and it would send suggestions.
Nobody read the emails. But users kept writing reviews of places they’d visited, and other people read those reviews.
The founders realized the user-generated content mattered more than the automated recommendations. They redesigned the platform around reviews and ratings.
Android Was Designed for Digital Cameras
Andy Rubin founded Android Inc. in 2003 to build an operating system for digital cameras. The plan was to create a camera OS that connected to computers for easy photo storage and management.
Rubin quickly realized the digital camera market was too small. The company shifted focus to mobile phones, where the potential market was enormous.
Google acquired Android in 2005 for an estimated $50 million and turned it into the world’s most-used mobile operating system.
WhatsApp Was Just a Status Update
Jan Koum created WhatsApp in 2009 as a simple status app. You could update your status to let contacts know if you were available, busy, at the gym, or in a meeting.
That’s all it did. Then Apple added push notifications to iOS.
Koum realized he could turn WhatsApp into a messaging platform where notifications would alert users to new messages. He added messaging functionality, and the app exploded in popularity.
Facebook purchased it in 2014 for $19 billion.
Twitch Evolved from Justin Kan’s Life Stream
Justin Kan strapped a webcam to his head in 2007 and streamed his entire life 24/7 on Justin.tv. The site expanded to let anyone broadcast live video on dedicated channels.
Gaming streams became wildly popular on the platform, drawing huge audiences. The company noticed gaming content accounted for most of their traffic and viewership.
They spun off the gaming section as Twitch in 2011 and eventually shut down Justin.tv. Amazon bought Twitch in 2014 for $970 million.
When Plans Change Everything
These companies share something besides success. They all recognized when their original idea wasn’t working and had the flexibility to change direction completely.
The apps you rely on today succeeded because their creators paid attention to what users actually wanted rather than stubbornly pursuing their initial vision. Sometimes the thing you build on the side, the feature nobody asked for, or the tool you create just to solve your own problem becomes more valuable than everything you planned.
The history of successful apps teaches you to stay alert to unexpected opportunities and remain willing to abandon your original plan entirely.
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