Somehow, it seems that when Erlang was getting a bit of hype, they abandoned the field for an even smaller niche, leaving the "real time web" type things to other languages. Granted, the language was created for that smaller niche, but if that's the only bit of terrain they want to defend... I see other languages squeezing them out over time.

I don't know if that makes sense, but languages need somewhat large communities to really thrive, in my opinion, and defining yourself into a small niche isn't a good way to get them.

For a short time some people hyped Erlang to be the solution for all things concurrent and chatterers didn't read the FAQ.