Popular and Buzzing

When I view the articles featured on the home page, it appears that social aspects (comments/likes) are what gets an article featured there.  Is that true or are their other criteria involved?  Just curious since I have only had one article display there and it happened to be an article of mine with the most comments (5).   And all of the articles I see featured have lots of comments. 

I am not that big on the social game, I kind of just do my own thing.   How important of a role does being social here play in ones success?

Our internal rankings are determined by various aspects: article quality, use of modules, profile pic and info, likes, comments, bookmarks, and a few secret sauce ingredients.

These numbers have no influence whatsoever on your Google rankings. However, higher internal ranks are shown more prominently on our front pages, which may contribute to a bit more traffic from folks who browse these listings.

Ok, thanks for the reply. :)