It's natural to lean towards just copying the latest big hit. 1) Market research is done for you, so you don't have to be as convincing to get funding, 2) there

It's natural to lean towards just copying the latest big hit. 1) Market research is done for you, so you don't have to be as convincing to get funding, 2) there's room in any niche for > 1 competitor (first, best, cheapest, at least :)), 3) creativity is hard, new ideas are hard, innovation is hard. And there's the major reason. We all* want easy money, so we groan and slap our foreheads with poorly disguised jealousy whenever a 14-yr old girl makes a million bucks with crappy myspace layouts. But the thing is, there's positive feedback for taking the low-hanging fruit: You can make a ton of money. And if you don't, at least you didn't have to invest much thought. The 'problem' (if so you categorize it) is that there's no promise of greater return for greater effort. You can spend your life trying to solve BigProblems until you die, and get further than anyone else, but the guy in the next dorm room retired at 25 after making a social-networking site for parakeets with dyslexia. In two days, in ASP classic. So if you're motivated by money, success, fame, there's not a lot of reason to go for the hard problems. And those are pretty common (and powerful) motivations. *All including you, unless you don't, in which case it doesn't.