Almost five years now, I first signed on in March 2005.

Q. What got you interested in playing B$?

I had started blogging in December 2004, and the spiders found me a month later. As I started to figure things out, I noticed a few hits from the game and decided to check it out. At first, the volume of information was intimidating, and I actually left the game alone for about 4 months.

Q. Ideas or Shares?

It depends, I play both. Shares can be a lot of fun when there are many players fighting over a few blogs, and so can competing for drops on rare or artefact industries.

Q. Why did you volunteer to be on GIC?

I really like to understand how things work, and I spent a lot of time mapping out the new ideas math. After that, I made some suggestions to the GIC and was doing some testing to help AdamF with the Dead Blog Finder. My membership on the GIC is all his fault.

Q. What's the hardest part of being on GIC?

Sometimes, players have really cool ideas and I have absolutely no idea how to make them work. A close second is explaining to my wife why I need to spend every evening online playing B$.

Q. You are the head of GIC? How is that different from other GIC members?

Not much different, really. My role as GIC Chairman is to be the primary interface with the game administrators and BOD. And to referee the Jello wrestling matches.

Q. Potent Wind send share prices all over the place. What happened? Can we expect to see that again any time soon?

The spike from Potent Wind was an expected consequence of removing the artificial limit on outgoing link value, coupled with the time needed to settle things out in the database. At the time, we had over 7 million blogs that needed to be indexed about 10 times to fully propagate the new valuations, and that caused the perturbations.
I don't expect to see anything like it again, but if someone has an idea that makes long-term sense with weird short-term effects, I'm game.

Q. Occasionally GIC will have a contest. How do you decide when to do this? Can we expect any new contests soon?

We don't have anything currently planned, but if someone has an idea for a contest we'd be happy to help set it up.

Q. Can players help GIC improve the game?

Ask questions, and make suggestions. Volunteer!

April 2006. I was a very casual player; stopped playing than started again.

Q. What got you interested in playing B$?

I was looking at my stats on a blog and saw blogshares showing up and was curious. I followed the link and was intrigued.

Q. Ideas or Shares?

Ideas, duh. No offense to shares mavens, I just think ideas are vastly more interesting than shares.

Q. Why did you volunteer to be an IM?

I'm a librarian in real life. I'm interested in how things are cataloged/organized so the index was intriguing to me. I had been asked to be an IM awhile before but real life kept me from accepting. I was spending more and more time voting, modding, and killing deads, so I volunteered.

Q. What's the hardest part of being an IM?

Sometimes it's knowing where to start. The index is large and there is just so much to do. Fortunately, we have a team of really smart, dedicated Index Managers and we're carving out a plan of attack.

Q. You've recently been promoted to Lead IM? How have your duties changed?

I've got more of a leadership role obviously. I've been called on to be the final word on something a couple of times. I expect that will continue. I consider myself incredibly lucky to have this great team of people who are doing so much to make the Index as good as we can.

Q. Are the IMs working on any projects you'd like (or can share) with your fellow players?

We have a couple of things in the works. Some of us are busy cleaning various industries that desperately need cleaning. Some of these were solo efforts (I am proud that I cleaned every single South American nation!) others are more team efforts.

What I'm really excited about is that we're taking a holistic look at the main areas of the Index. The blogosphere has changed so much since it was first organized and we have crossover in more than one area. The hope is that we can figure out how to minimize the crossover and get a cleaner index. And then of course, to do that.

Q. Occasionally the IMs will have a contest (like "A is for Artefact"). How do you decide when to do this? Can we expect any new contests soon?

I am hoping we do have some new contests. They may be repeats of old ideas, for instance, we still have a ton of really cheap industries with no artefact.

Q. What are the traits of a good artefact suggestion? How do the IMs decide what artefact to release and when? Does Immunis just enjoy releasing artefacts in blogless industries or is he just evil?

A good artefact suggestion is well written, original, and should be really representative of that industry. Merely copying text from Wikipedia or some other site is not what we're looking for.

How do we decide? Well, the good entries usually stick out right away. The IM looks at the suggestion thread and does some research. Sometimes the IM has a particular interest in creating an artefact by themselves. If the IM thinks it's worth releasing, he or she checks to see how many people can build it. Why? Well, in some cases the IM who's looking at that industry may be the only person or one of the only people who can. Unless it's an arte that we know is going to be easily built, that IM does not release it.

My personal belief is that Immunis enjoys releasing artefacts in blogless industries and that, yes, he is evil. I say that with love.

Q. What about sub-industry suggestions? How do you decide which to add? How can a player improve the chance their suggestion will be released?

If it's a location industry, it has to meet the population criteria - less than 15000 people and it does not get into the Index.

If it's a content industry, it has to be something with enough blogs to merit inclusion. We're trying to not add micro specific things. For instance, while you could say that the Beatles were an iconic group and worthy of being in the Index, we don't need every band that every cut a record there. No Geronimo Jacksons.

A player who really wants a subindustry approved should make sure they do the research on a population industry. Find a good representative blog and write a clear, well- written description.

Q. What can players do to improve the Index?

Report deads. Suggest title changes. Vote against no longer valid industries. Let us know when you spot problems. We welcome your input!

_{(Graphs are correct at time of article publication)}

Post your secrets anonymously, and have them appear online. First listed in April 2006, PostSecret quickly gained value, peaking at over B$100,000,000 before being hit by the Potent Wind decline that pushed the valuation down to its current level of B$8.3m, however the blog continues to grow in strength each month, soon to pass 10,000 incoming links. The blog has a strong position in the Top 100 and the owner Frank Warren still continues to post fresh secrets every Sunday. Begun as a community mail art project, the site quickly gained a huge following, now with over 60,000 people registered on the chat forum. Frank himself regularly comments and appears to speak at venues across the US.

In other news, yesterday the Blogshares server went down (again), suffering it's first hard disk failure since 2003. We're temporarily on lowered strength until the disk(s) can be replaced and the RAID array rebuilt, hopefully (!) in the next few days. Also, it seems that for a while users have been experiencing problems using PayPal to purchase Premium Membership. We'll be looking into this, but if you have any information that could be of use, drop us an email.

To allow for a period of adjustment, these changes will be effective starting at 1500 BST, 09 Feb 2009.

Related forum discussion here.

Update: Don't worry, it's not real.

To those of you who chose to participate, we are deeply honored and privileged to have received your kindness.

To those who were not aware (like us), you should know that there is a group of players who will instigate such an effort. Find out who they are, and help them. They are wonderful people.

Thank you, all.