How To Go Viral
The man who created flash mobs explains why crazes like Susan Boyle ruin our ability to focus on the big picture.
Bill Wasik is an Internet instigator. Though he works as an editor at Harper's, Wasik is best known as the creator of flash mobs, that early 21st-century trend in which, directed by chain e-mails, people formed mobs in public places for no other reason than to form mobs. That's hardly his only act of Internet impishness, though: Over the course of his career, Wasik has adopted numerous online personas in order to test the boundaries of our ever-expanding viral culture. He tried to derail the burgeoning career of indie rock darlings Peter Bjorn and John, started a fake version of the New York Times for conservatives, and ran a site focused exclusively on negative attacks against political candidates. In the process, he's analyzed how and why some stories became cultural phenomenons and others languish in the nursing home of online oblivion.
Read more: http://globalbestpractice.blogspot.com/2009/06/how-to-go-viral.html
Tags: Bill Wasik, nanostories, viral culture, salon, How Stories Live and Die in Viral Culture, buzzfeed, Jonah Peretti, Contagious Festival, Global Blog Network, youtube, myspace,
