I haven't seen anyone mention this but part of the success is that they had git in their name. All social platform successes aside, they had the right technology at the right time.
Before I had ever heard of GitHub, I had seen presentations at the large company I worked for praising git. Git was thrown into the limelight at the same time as subversion, CVS, perforce etc. were being eschewed.
Before I had ever heard of GitHub, I had seen presentations at the large company I worked for praising git. Git was thrown into the limelight at the same time as subversion, CVS, perforce etc. were being eschewed.