It is a pre-historic attempt at a privacy-enhanced cryptocurrency, where cryptonote is the 21th century.
Something built on true and tested cryptography and technology that is (or will be) as good as anyone might need for any practical purposes vs. something new that's not stood the test of time yet and with unsolved (and potentially unsolvable) issues.
You could have said the same of bitcoin at the beginning wrt something that was more established. Time will tell!
I personally believe darkcoin is going to demise much faster than many expect, once the supernodes (not sure of the name) owners begin selling it will be dominos effect.