Luke is right. The only reason people buy it is to make a profit off how volatile it is. Don't kid yourself in thinking it is as good as bitcoin. Think in terms of all of the COD clones, did they ever actually succeed in being the new popular game? No, because they brought nothing substantially new to the table. COD always won over the market, just like bitcoin does and will.
Agreed. I encourage people to mine LTC if it's profitable for them to do so, but it's sad that some people are actually investing in Litecoin. Litecoin and other near-exact Bitcoin clones have no chance of going anywhere, and it's a tragedy that people are spending time on them rather than Bitcoin or an altcoin that actually improves significantly on Bitcoin. There are so many interesting things that an altcoin
could do, but people waste time on these tiny Bitcoin modifications...