Maybe one of the reasons for sudden increase in the projects are companies such as Whitehat Jr. Whitehat incorporates and leverages Scratch in their lesson plans. For each lesson kids may be creating 1-3 Scratch programs. You can read more about Whitehat Jr, their approach to sales etc by doing a little googling. And am sure there are other companies who follow the same practice of leveraging Scratch in tutorials. (edit) Not condoning this, just adding more information.