I think a healthy dose of cynicism is a good thing and I’ve really enjoyed Dare’s blog over the years. In fact RSS Bandit was my first reader and really got me into the whole blog thing. I stopped using it when I realized it was too big of a pain keeping client readers updated and syndicated and switched to BlogLines. Anyway, I about choked on my lunch today when I saw his comment about Web 2.0 sites being unoriginal in their use of AJAX, Tagging, APIs, etc. This coming from from someone who works for a company (and even team I think?) that this week released Windows Live QNA, which is perhaps the most unoriginal app I have seen in a long time (hello, yahoo called and what’s their app back), and is perhaps one of the most unoriginal companies ever (ok, they invented AJAX, I’ll give them some credit).

Admittedly, Microsoft has executed unoriginality better than anyone in history and better than the current crop of Web 2.0 startups, especially since they have paying customers. But, my point is you don’t have to be original to be successful, and Web 2.0 founders will find their way with experimenting with these features. We should all think hard about the value of adding these types of features and strive to come up with innovative stuff, but it’s certainly not sad or depressing to see people give entrepreneurship a go.