What causes Alt-Coins to gain traction?

[bill gator]

I have been thinking about this for the past few days, because up until recently I paid no mind to alternative to bitcoin, and I have since realized I am being closed minded to the possibility that an alt-coin could genuinely be as innovate as bitcoin itself to a degree in certain areas or aspects.


What causes an Alt-coin to gain popularity, or increase in price, as in what is driving investments, clients and transactions to these alternatives?
Should bitcoin developers assume more influence from the popular alt-coins, such as quicker transactions times, etc. or do these more "populist" features come at cost too high for the security or central philosophy of bitcoin?

I know it has been discussed before, but in the long-term does bitcoin need to be fundamentally worried about the limitations it presently has? The limitations that other coins are quick to work around if it means they access a niche market. It seems that bitcoin is by far the most secure of all the crypto-currencies, please correct me if I am wrong, and isn't that one of the most important of all the fundamental values that bitcoin was founded on? To me, these alternative too closely resemble regular 3rd party payment processors, without decentralization or with other features which make decentralization effect-less.

What limitations other than transactions per second, confirmation speed and transaction cost are bitcoins biggest flaws pushing people to alt-coins?