It's a stable production language which has just turned 17.3, has extensive resources, and runs on its own VM (kind of like how Java runs on the JVM). This gives you all of the amazing concurrent power which has helped the Heroku guys here.
Check it out!: http://erlang.org/
The reason I'm promoting elixir instead is because I feel that it's easier to pick up in terms of how different it is from imperative and OO languages.
While you are right in how Erlang has a much longer reputation, it's odd though how it hasn't gained much popularity like other languages that have been around for that long.
What makes Elixir easier to learn for OO programmers?
Spend 5 minutes developing an app in Elixir and you'll realize why it's not just "only syntactically different" from Erlang.
Which libraries and tools do you think set Elixir apart? Do you prefer it to erlang (I've seen you in #elixir-lang ;)?
http://devintorr.es/blog/2013/01/22/the-excitement-of-elixir...
NB: I don't use it at work or anything, just read up on it during free time.
I'd say: evaluate both and pick what suits you.
Yeah trying both is definitely the best way to go about it.
But all of Elixir's support and ecosystem are available to you from Erlang, only if you install elixir.