Scratch

A featured project is one that was chosen by the Scratch Team. It doesn't need a certain amount of views or love its to get on featured, but normally a project gets featured when it is more than a week old. They feature creative projects, many of which include hand-drawn sprites.

Featured projects are selected by the Scratch team.  The Surprise projects are random.  The other front page categories are somewhat more mysterious.  I don't know how many Love Its or Views you need to get to make the front page.  I suspect that it's not a hard and fast number but the most received in a certain time period (like in the last day) since it says Top Loved Lately (and the same on Viewed and Downloaded).  But this is all guesswork as I don't actually know.

Tanner-FBI wrote:

Actually, I found out now, Its a project that is the VERY FIRST of its kind, although the strange thing is, Lanie got two Scratch Books featured ???

Because he/she (I think she) came up with the idea and worked hard on it.

It's as simple as if the Scratch Team likes a project, they feature it! Love its/ favorites have nothing to do with it; as Paddle2See mentioned they have their own category.