Bill Wasik is a very modern sort of participatory journalist. An editor at Harper's Magazine, he has used the tools of our age—the Web, comment forums, social networking sites—to examine how trends, news stories and personalities spike in popularity and then disappear into obscurity faster than it takes most journalists can grab a notepad.

Companies are keenly aware of these spikes of attention. Movie studios release “Red Band” trailers online, ad agencies make viral videos, and others use Twitter, Facebook, and whatever else was invented while you to read this paragraph to reach consumers.

In his new book, And Then There's This: How Stories Live and Die in Viral Culture (Penguin), Wasik examines how this works, tracking the influence of sites like Pitchfork on the music business, Politico on beltway news and gossip, and the Huffington Post on just about everything. He also makes waves of his own, devising experiments in viral marketing and "meme" creation, the most successful of which was the Flash Mob Project.

We spoke with Wasik about these issues and whether his own book might spike—and then flatline—like the memes he identified.

How long has the book been gestating?

The Flash Mob Project happened in 2003, and I really didn't have any plans to write about or to ever come forward in any public way as the person behind that. It wasn't until I heard about the Fusion Flash Mob concerts that Ford was putting together that I suddenly thought, This is such a ridiculous co-optation of the Flash Mob idea. I felt I had to go and see one of these things. And then once I had seen it, I suddenly felt moved to write up the whole story for Harper's. The Fusion concert was summer of 2005 and the story appeared Spring 2006. And when I wrote the article, I really didn't imagine I'd turn it into a book. All throughout the whole process I've been resistant to overplaying the Flash Mob Project.

Was there was ever concern that some of the things you'd write about would evaporate by the time the book came out?

It was definitely something that my agent talked about; it was something that my editors talked about. It was something I worried about. But at the end of the day, I realized that the whole context of the book was about the kind of ruination of these kinds of tiny trends—it was sort of about the very fact that you can't ever seem up to date in a weekly or monthly context because there are so many of these tiny little stories. They have no shelf life. What I tried to do was essentially take that danger and turn it into an opportunity.

What do you think of the people who make it their lives to keep up with the media churn, like bloggers, trend journalists, and marketers?

Let me begin by saying that I put myself in that category. I do try to keep up with the churn. I think that on some level trying to keep up with the churn is the most dangerous thing you can do, because you never do succeed. It's impossible to keep up with everything.