What makes a good traffic exchange?

What in your view differentiates a good traffic exchange from a bad one? Why are some traffic exchanges hugely successful in terms of membership numbers while others never seem to gain popularity?
Having looked at the main stream traffic exchanges, it seems very clear to me that their support for new traffic exchange launches has a lot to do with their prospects of success. Why? The answer is simple, if I contact 160 000 surfers on my exchange telling them how great some new traffic exchange is, I will obviously have some degree of success. Firstly you are receiving that news from someone who has credility in your eyes as far as traffic exchanges are concerned. Secondly, traffic exchange surfers are constantly on the look out for new exchanges and new offers. There is no TE surfer who is only surfing one traffic exchange.
So first priority for joining a traffic exchange is the number of members that a particular exchange has.
Secondly, I believe that the easy of use of a traffic exchange also is a contributing factor to its popularity. By ease of use I mean (a) the length of the timer in seconds for surfing, (b) the number of credits earned per view, (c) the number of website/splash pages you are allowed simultaneously.
The simple fact is that anyone today can for very little money (next to nothing) purchase a traffic exchange script and set up business. Yet the profits from such an exchange depend on traffic as does everything on the Internet. That is where the small start-ups fail. It is a vicious circle. Not sufficient adverising power without the advertising support and added credibility of the "big boys", little traffic, little interest. The traffic exchange fails. The secret to the success of any traffic exchange is the number of surfers/members as this is a sign of the exposure you would get by joining such an exchange. If you are on a traffic exchange and see there are currently three people online you can estimate that you get zero exposure, If, however, you are on a traffic exchange and see there are currently 324 other members surfing then this is a very different story in terms of the amount of exposur eyour website will receive. I believe it is increasingly difficult to get a foot in the door in the traffic exchange business and - I may be wrong - I suspect that the big and successful exchanges are using their power and credibility to create the new exchanges and by that I mean the new exchanges that will survive over time.

Internet and blogs - quo vadis?

The recent rise in social media and social networking through the Internet has interesting repercussions, not all of which are positive, I believe. Let me give you an example of current research which makes me, a simple webmaster and search engine optimizer, feel like a fly trying to scratch its way from the surface to the core of the Internet world - sorry, wrong perspective as we are all being told the Internet does not have a core of center.
I would deny such a statement when I look at the increasing spread of pervasive technologies with companies such as g00gle which, with its myraid email, blogging, search, news services etc. is trying to make itself the center - or one center, of the Internet - and making a damn good job of it if I may say so.
The Internet playing field is no longer level, it is very much tipped to the side of those who have the BIG money - like everything else in life. Basically, it is at present difficult to estimate what is really going on in the Internet and I see it reflecting equally the cycles of the REAL economy. Let me give you a small example.

I just discovered a company which I shall not name. This company can give you any data you want from blogs - it has indexed the full content of some 20 million blogs and is filtering and analysing the content with astounding success in terms of predictions. Blogs, basically, are an expression of individual opinion and with 20 million of them around this opinion covers a lot of topics. Blogs are equally a way of influencing and representing people. So Company X strips off the html and looks at the content, let us say of all blogs about movies. There are a lot.
Then using software which can identify what one would call positive sentiment - simple language parsing I assume - it can actually produce data from these 20 million blogs which gives a fair indication of what people are saying about a particular movie. This info can actually predict what the popularity of a particular movie will be in one week's time and has a success rate of some 86%.
Such is the current state of data mining from a blog like this one, amplified 20 million times. Now, without being paranoid, I can understand why we are all encouraged to blog, why we are given free tools to do so. The result is a billion dollar industry which is predicting successfully the future in the way I describe. What level of sophistication can such technology achieve? How ethical is such work? Are we busy creating monsters that are going to destroy us? I assume what applies to movies, as in the example I give, can also apply to cars, food, fashion - you name it.

Is it a good idea to join a blog network

Looking around to explore the various means of getting traffic to my website, in addition to traffic exchanges I have found what are called "Blog natworks". Basically these are a numbe rof blogs and owners who share something in common and who visit each other in much the same form as in a traffic exchange. Please correct me if I am wrong.
To me these are something which have grown out of necessity in the little of it getting increasingly difficult to get traffic to a website.
While such formulae, such as the Shiny Media group in the UK, seem to have lacked success - the latter has gone into administration - there do seem to be several others which are doing OK.
Recently, however, I see reports from bloggers that g00gle has virtual launched a Jahad on blog networks treating them in much the same way as link farms. Several of the leaders have had their PR sliced by g00gle in recent weeks.

Who can help me - what is autosurf? and why?

To date we have looked only at manual traffic exchanges, by that I mean traffic exchanges where you receive credits for the number of other sites you surf. This is usually on a one to one or one to two ratio. My question is: what is the point of autosurf traffic exchanges. As I understand the issue - correct me if I am wrong - an autosurf traffic exchange is one where automatically you see a new site every so many second without having to physically click after a certain number of seconds?
My question is why would someone want to do this? It means virtually your site is rotating but basically although being visited no one actually looks at it.
Maybe I am stupid but I cannot understand why someone would want to do this. Sure it is also a means of getting traffic but if no one looks at the content of your site what is the point of this traffic. G00gle will realise where the traffic is coming from and will not reward you in terms of improving your page ranking. So I come back to the same point, what is the use of auto surf exchanges? Answers very welcome!