How does one attain 1,000+ connections like blockchain.info? At this moment, blockchain.info has over 1,900 nodes connected to their bitcoin client.

I have been running an m1.small ubuntu 12.04 server and bitcoind for ~4 days straight now with no reboots. My bitcoind client still only shows ~60 connections maximum when performing a "./bitcoind getinfo" command.

How can I achieve 1,000+ connections to my bitcoind client? And is it "worth it" in your opinion?

EDIT: I have re-started my bitcoind client with the -maxconnections=1000 and -timeout=15000 parameters but after ~12 hours of running bitcoind, the number of connections is only up to ~40. And I don't seem to be maxing out my CPU, RAM, or bandwidth just yet.

EDIT 2: I have not seen a "connected time" over 8 hours in the list provided by blockchain.info so that tells me they must restart their server every 8 hours or so. Either that, or connections drop and refresh after 8 hours? I am beginning to think that blockchain.info keeps track of IP addresses running bitcoin in a database of sorts... and forefully connects to them every time their bitcoind reboots. Am I right?
Bitcoin by default will not make more than 8 outgoing connections, and -maxconnections only controls how many incoming connections you allow. Feel free to set this higher, but it will take time before others connect to you in large numbers.

Please don't change this, as there is no need. Connectable peers on the network are a scarce resource, and essential to the decentralization. If people go try connect to all of them like some sites do, we'll very quickly run out.

In case you're a merchant or miner, you perhaps want to set up a few fixed connections to trusted others (see the -addnode command line/config option), but having more connections does not mean stronger verification (the reference client always verifies everything) or even faster relaying (as you'll slow down by distributing new blocks and transactions to all your peers). It is mostly a matter of providing a service to the network.