In hardware, and to a lesser extent software, yes the first mover rarely have the last laugh. But on the web, it's a different story, first mover has significant advantage. Case in point->Youtube, I can't see how another video site can topple youtube's dominance. or Google the first site to build a good search engine in 2003, is still the dominant search engine 10 years later. or Facebook, first real name SNS from 2004, still the dominant real name SNS 9 years later.
First rule of history, the victor writes it!
Youtube started as a hot or not site, but added video - bought by Google 18 months later, for far too much money, and slowly an attention monopoly is created!
Google were very late to the search engine party - I was using it in 1998 because it was the one that worked, and it was cool, unlike Altavista which looked awful!
Facebook didn't really add anything new to what already existed - except exclusivity - it was the social network you couldn't join unless you were in Harvard or a another nice university - so everyone wanted to join!
All the social stuff had been invented earlier and worked well for ICQ in 1996, but without that mainstream push, nothing happened - although ICQ became QQ and is being used by the Asian half of the world today!
The history of bitcoin will easily be as exciting to read in hindsight!