Its just competition, everyone wants to be in. But some are genuine improvement. And havn't you heard competition is good!!
I whole-heartedly agree w/ you on that. Competition is great.
However I have an inkling that maybe one of the "Copycat Coins" or "CloneCoin" will make a substantial improvement to the Crypto currency infrastructure and render BTC "semi" obsolete but not completely. like DSL did 56k or cable did DSL. Maybe Altcoins will further enhance the anonymity aspects of Cryptocurrency as a whole being that most if not all of them have some sort of an exchange that lets you convert coin to other coin formats and fiats. This essentially extends bitcoin functionality, thus rendering competition as GREAT.