It is superior because it is functional, which means, while it's possible, less state, less undefined behavior, less crashes, less bugs. Because it has efficient process-based execution model - easy scalable with less complication, less synchronization, less overhead.
It is superior because it is less verbose and more readable which is really matters for a language, not its runtime.
There are only two big problems with Erlang - there is no huge mediocre crowds with knowledge of language basics and some cowboy-coding experience gained from monkey-spaghetti-patching of some bunch of web-pages, and it has no hyped projects like adding libevent functionality to really good (no kidding!) in-browser VM. (hint: General purpose VM should be, at very least, SMP-aware).
btw, Trolls of all countries, unite! ^_^