I have just noticed that my team's top 6 players were found cheating, and numerous top players of our opponents did too for online chess.  What developed that made chess.com act so quickly, and all at once?

Yes, erik announced a few weeks ago in the "Cheating Forum" group that something like this would be happening soon. Seems they finally got around to doing it.

2 players in my section have been kicked in the past few minutes... go chess.com!

Do we know what tools chess.com uses to determine how a person has cheated?  It seems pretty subjective, however I am glad that the cheaters are being caught.

They don't disclose exactly what kind of methods they use, but it seems that they (mainly) use some statistical tools, and only kick people if they have an extremely high confidence that they are cheating. For all (not really, but some...) the dirty details join "Cheating Forum" and browse the endless threads in their forum. It won't be much fun, though...

(Personal opinion below, and does not necessarily represent the views of chess.com management or anyone else with authority or insight.)

Three beliefs I have: a) we will not be told what tools are being used - no need to give info that might help cheaters defeat the system, b) since undoubtedly tools would have to be employed in any case but those of self-admission, that's sounds like a fairly objective method for deciding who's defying probability and making more 3000-rating moves than a human ought to be able to make, and c) I agree that it's great that chess.com continues to strive to make cheating a fruitless pursuit here.

I can't help but to think of the time wasted by these people, some of these people have been on for 3+ years.  Generally, I consider your live rating to be close to a person's normal ability or strength.  I generally add 300 points to equal roughly your online rating.  One guy from my team had a 1620 USCF, but over 2500 online.  That makes me think that he has to use significant help to make his moves.

Without question: no true 1620 USCF can hold a 2500 here without considerable aide (sic). 

Looks like they've started.  Many missing from the top players, including a few notables, and likely many more to come:

http://www.chess.com/echess/players.html

I said missing.

I'm familiar with who occupied a number of the top spots up until a few days ago -- most notably, Gonnosuke has had his account closed for example:

http://www.chess.com/members/view/gonnosuke

674 accounts have been closed for cheating so far today.

Prior to today, the average was in the neighbourhood of a half-a-dozen a day.

http://www.chess.com/cheating.html

Is it realistic for a player (me) that has a low-mid 1400 rating live to beat a 2350 player currently online?  My calculations above would put the player to be roughly 2050 OTB, if the online chess rating is correct.  I don't want to discredit him, I would call it a 2050+ blunder, but I am flabbergasted that he is close to 2400 online now, considering that I am a strong beginner/intermediate, and my calculations would put him close to being titled, ratings wise. 

Not surprised in a couple of cases.  One of my opponents had a record of something like 140 wins and one loss.  

Something that rots my socks, though....... I was in the finals of a knockout tournament against one of the cheaters.  He won the first game, then was deleted, so I won the second game.  But he gets to win the tournament!  Hardly appropriate, in my opinion.

Beancounter: did you complain?  I'm thinking chess.com would fix that.  Maybe they just didn't realize that it happened.  There are lots of tournaments going on.

Wow.  He's been around forever.

Too bad.  He was personable.

I've always thought that if someone withdraws or has their account closed for any reason during a tournament that all of their games in the current round, whether completed or not, should be nullified.  It's not perfect as the tiebreak scores can't really be dealt with cleanly, but it sure is better than what happens now.

And knowledgeable.  I genuinely liked him, but it was also deadly clear he was cheating.

I'm not going to worry about it now - cleaning up after 724 cheaters has to be an administrative nightmare.  I'll give the dust a couple days to settle.

If you've been following any of the discussion in the cheating forum it's been clearly explained (ad nauseum) how cheating detection can and does work, and can be effectively implemented by anyone regardless of chess skill.