I did a search for "math of blog explosion" and "blog explosion math" on both Google and Yahoo and all four resulted in nothing…not a single entry. I tried some other searches but couldn't find a good analysis of the numbers behind the workings of Blog Explosion. However, there are plenty of bloggers who have posted…shall we say, less than accurate comments about how BE works.

First, Blog Explosion requires the use of free credits to balance things out. For example, imagine if there were just three BE surfers. In one day they all surf each other's sites. They each surf two sites, times three people, equaling six visits. But they only earned the right to receive one visitor each. The equation is short three visitors. It is balanced out by letting each surfer win one credit. The equation is also balanced out by people who buy credits instead of earning or winning them. BE cannot stop giving away and selling credits. If it did, the whole system would collapse.

No doubt, winning credits also serves the purpose of getting some people to surf longer than they would normally as they are enticed by the chance of the big win and encouraged along with the occasional little tidbit. But, how much and how often credit wins are given out is determined not by the mood of BE but, rather, by the number of credits that are purchased. It is only indirectly controlled by BE by setting the price of credits. BE only has a finite number of credits to sell and give away, the amount of which is equal to the sum of what everyone earns. If too many people purchase credits, not only do they risk running out of credits to sell but they lose the ability to give away credits to encourage surfing. The solution is to simply raise the price of credits which, if my memory is correct, has not happened.

Some people have commented lately that there has been a decrease in the number and frequency in which credits are won and that the number of banners you can purchase with one credit has dropped from the originally 1 credit = 50 banners to the current 1 = 30. [Edit, now 1 = 25.] What prompted this entry was some of those people attributing this to some evil or underhanded motive by BE. Not coincidentally, the blogs of those who attributed such manipulation to BE tended towards the liberal side: corporations are bad, I'm not responsible for my life, I need the government to get through the day, etc.

I believe nothing could be farther from the truth. I believe, other than the setting of the price for purchased credits, that BE is on autopilot. The decrease in winnable credits is easily explained by the fact that people are likely buying more credits with actual cash having tired of surfing for 50 credits an hour (60 theoretically, but closer to 50 in practice) but still addicted to the traffic that BE brings to their sites. The increased number of purchased credits has simply decreased the number of credits that can be won.

As to the credit/banner exchange rate, that's almost certainly just the result of supply and demand. BE probably had a big cue of banner placement requests. It doesn't matter if the ratio goes down to 1 credit for 5 banners...by definition, the amount of banners is always set at the right amount if there are no pages coming up without banners and no huge cue of people waiting to have their banner placed.

This has admittedly been incredibly superficial. If anyone knows of a more in depth analysis, please let me know.