When BTC started, nobody had any and it was worthless, so it was right to give away thousands of BTC to make it popular. All that has changed. Now that BTC's worth something, now that companies are building on BTC, now that serious business transactions are made with bitcoin, it's about time for faucets to adapt.
BTC is real. It's money, and you've got to work to earn some. I hope all faucets will disappear in 2015. Faucets are hurting bitcoin by making some people believing you can get it while doing nothing sitting in your home. No, BTC isn't like that, and it shouldn't be any easier to get than any fiat currency. Even for small amounts.
I have used some faucets in my time, but they all offer less than one cents worth of Bitcoin every few hours.
I played the coin flapper game for a while too, and thought it had potential to get me some real bitcoins, but then I realised that even that would be about 30k satoshi a day, which is nothing.
It is very cheap advertising that no one would go for if it were in fiat currency, it shouldn't be encouraged, but for different reasons to those you give..