Popular

In one blip central reply a while ago they said they wouldn't talk about the algorithm to prevent (try to?) people gaming the system.

No-one has ever known. That's part of the charm of blipping.
Relax.

An absolute mystery - it would need the world's best IT minds to crack it......

Maybe Blipcentral throw dice.

It reminds me of a story I heard in Detroit many years ago.

The weather-forecasters were saying there was an 80% chance of snow. A puzzled local phoned to ask what that meant. They said "well there are ten of us here and 8 think its going to snow"

An old cynic writes: it's all in the hearts. Chuck your hearts out every day to people who will chuck their hearts back to you and you'll soon be up there, particularly if you have a half-decent image although that's not compulsory. Stars? Pfff - just confetti.

There's no complicated algorithm. If you look at the number of hearts each image has it goes downwards from the first entry. That's the same as 'Favourites' on the old site except that now people are allowed more than one entry in Popular so there's an even smaller number of blippers represented. I mourn Spotlight, as recently revamped before polarisation. That brought all sorts of interesting images to the fore even if the blipper didn't have many subscribers showering hearts.