There seems something logically fallacious in the notion that Bitcoin will succeed and Litecoin will fail despite the fact that Litecoin does what Bitcoin does. The assumption is that there can be only one given a lack of differences. What precedent is there for placing such concrete faith in this assumption?
Finally, there are technical differences and saying that there isn't over and over doesn't make it less true. Faster confirmation time is rather nice, imo and having an alternative for GPU/CPU miners in the face of ASIC (as a result of a technical difference) may create a real thriving market in the near future. It is not like some other alt-coins I will not mention that have absolutely no market for expenditure.
This. And a lot of what users said, once the 600TH+ of ASICs hit the Bitcoin universe, GPU-mining will become history. Anyone with a GPU is going to have to mine somewhere or quit, they will probably go towards Litecoin, I don't see a lot of users giving up hope. Mining doesn't make a coin particularly worth more, but it does keep it alive.
It's so harsh to say that "Litecoin is a pyramid scheme because it's like Bitcoin but not Bitcoin. Well, if anything Bitcoin had the biggest premine, not directly due to someone hiding in a corner mining coins by themself, but because no one had ever heard of "mining" coins like this, at least the masses weren't aware, so the early adopters (although a lof cashed out) were able to generate thousands of coins per day on hardly any hardware, and this continued for a long time. A large portion of the original block halving period went to a small group of people, and the percentage gets even scarier when you consider that for the next 40-50 years, Bitcoins get harder and harder to find, eventually only 1 BTC per year and so on, yet there are users who generated enough coins to make their entire families wealthy forever if all goes as planned and they saved their coins. No reason to call it a pyramid scheme, which is like saying it's a scam, which is misleading and IMHO hypocritical.
Sure, that's the name of the game, getting in while you have a chance, it's perfectly fair for all parties but with Litecoin... We all have a fair shot at this. Everyone hearing about it at the same time, everyone has a fair chance to stock up or mine it and that sort of thing. It's different enough that it's unique, it has properties to make it technically even more valuable as a tool than Bitcoin is. 4x faster confirmation times? Can you say, small in person transactions made easy? If a user has to choose between 2.5 minutes and 10 minutes every day or multiple times a day if they are given two options, you know they will choose the faster route (and I'm talking like, the future, when drink machines accept cryptocoins at 1 conf and they're standing their waiting or if you sold something on craigslist and you have the person over at your house and he sends the coins from there and has to wait 10 minutes, potentially much longer? Time is money, and convenience is a massive bonus in this world.
Another reason to keep it in mind is that it is a different currency but it's still similar to Bitcoin is enough ways to make it trivial to accept both, and other cryptocurrencies. Any software developed to accept Bitcoin could be adapted for Litecoin in a small fraction of the time it took to develop it in the first place, I assume in most cases it wouldn't take much effort at all.
Drawbacks: limited development, it seems to have stalled and regular releases are few and.. nonexistant. I'm sure with a little effort the tricks learned from Bitcoin could be merged into a new client, or maybe Electrum/Armory/Blockchain.info/and so on could create alternative clients if Litecoin picks up enough momentum to warrant that.
I think it's here to stay and the value is destined to increase but I sometimes get the feeling it's going to take awhile.