It seems the media is just starting to notice the non-bitcoin crypto currencies:
http://finance.yahoo.com/news/litecoin-heres-everything-know...
Although, to be fair, Wired noticed it back in June:
http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2013-06/16/litecoin
Litecoin is still minor news, but with more exchanges starting to support it [1], it might actually amount to something.
As for my own bias: I own a very trivial number of litecoins and bitcoins (most from a small amount of mining), so I wouldn't mind these increasing even more. That said, I am still skeptical, but I am enjoying watching this all play out.
[1] https://www.okpay.com/en/company/news/okpay-now-supports-lit...
Edit: And yes, agreed on your mark cap point. Still a useful benchmark, but not without some caveats.
As always, though, market cap isn't really the current share price times number number of shares. It is the accumulated sum of all the buy offers over the top N share bids (N = number of shares in existence), not all of which are max price.