Want to know how Converse trainers amassed 20 million Facebook impressions, over 800,000 new fans, 26 million unique users AND increased sales by 50%, and all in one month? Their marketing strategy really pushed the creative limits, reminding us that they still firmly held a finger on the pulse of innovative marketing. This video clip of The Screen details their campaign and reveals a few surprises. It’s a great case study; they remain true to their brand image – the Chuck Taylor all American sneakers are hardly surreptitious – and also succeed in re-inventing themselves. And bonus points for all the social media buzz.

When it was reported that Internet Explorer users officially had a lower IQ than those who logged on to other browsers… well it just didn’t really make much sense.

The whole report was an example of the kind of research where the results didn’t actually matter very much.

If it were true (which it wasn’t, as it turned out the whole report was a scam) then would devout supporters of IE don lens-less glasses whilst quietly deleting all their internet history? Would Safari surfers pat themselves on the back and apply for mensa? All very speculative, but I am doubtful.

And then, how do the firm in question, AptiQuant (who sound a bit more maritime than top web browser researchers) go about explaining away these findings?

Tenuous relationships could be extrapolated I suppose. I guess the obvious connection that they are clamouring to get the population to clutch onto is that using more recent internet browsers like Firefox shows a tech savvy approach to web use.

Or maybe sticking to the Microsoft already-installed Internet Explorer shows a narrow mindedness, or a more complacent and lazy outlook to what’s on offer. Perhaps Chrome users are just smarter (which is what they suggested. Google Chrome came top in the reports. Where was Google when all this was going on?)

Readers of the BBC report discovered that AptiQuant only launched six months previously, poking holes in the credibility of their findings. But the length of time they’ve been operating for seems the last thing wrong with all this.

I am so glad that the research was pulled up as false. It’s just the kind of information done for publicity, where the results don’t actually benefit anyone.

This encouraging of the categorisation of people on seemingly random criteria, building up walls in a very thinly veiled attempt at scare mongering, runs counter to all the great things the internet has given us.

John Carmack, one of the software developers behind the iconic video game Doom, has stated that violent video games reduce aggression, reported The Telegraph yesterday (August 2).

He actually said that.

Gamers, as a demographic, are “at worse neutral and potentially positive” in disposition when faced with violence. Compared to the non-Doom playing-heathens often found in university campuses, this is all according to Carmack.

I’m not denying the cathartic positives that come from thrashing on a drum kit, and I’m not going to list all the instances where video games have and have not been the main motivation behind aggressive behaviour – or the acute frustration felt when playing tetris.

The frustration of going back to this argument again, whether you condemn or condone Carmack’s line of thinking, is the flagrant reluctance to accept that atrocious acts of violence can be explained entirely by either environmental or genetic reasons. The possibility that the lines between cause and effect become irrevocably blurred in these complex arguments is rejected for a more simple model.

The huge increase in gamification and interactive gaming then makes this issue even more complicated. We’re now in a world where gamers are no longer staring at two white strips on a black background, but are fully immersed in alternate realities, and, presumably, the lag time in exiting that reality is also extended.

The developments have been monumental. Now game developers are really upping the reality stakes, so that car racing games incorporate the search for the next F1 driver, and football platforms take the gamer through the rise and fall of our celebrity athletes – depending on what decisions are made.

Revenue and sponsorship comes from the normal channels. An Alfa Romeo could be driven by every member on your virtual Chelsea football team.

Will brand placement be a feature in the next zombie video game? If so we need to be a bit clearer about where we stand on Carmack’s argument.

Viruses on the web are nothing new. Receiving a spammed email from a ‘friend’ containing a suspicious link every week – and deleting it – makes up the bread and butter of my online experiences.

Woe betides the hapless soul who still falls for these tricks – and there are still plenty of them out there. These links normally open up doomed doorways to phishing websites, where usernames or passwords are required and important personal or financial information is obtained. The link will infect the system and continue to expand and recruit, enlisting other compromised computers to join the growing botnet behemoth, flooding inboxes and infuriating millions.

That people click on unknown suspicious-looking links, allowing these malware programmes to spread unawares, is concerning.

In the summer of 2010 the FBI arrested a 23 year old responsible for the malicious software that integrated an estimated 12 million systems into a botnet. Some of the particularly potent and extensive bots end up losing all concept of scalability.

The impact on Twitter is extreme. Sadly, I know people who have let curiosity prevail and followed the url (the enticing prefix of “haha my friend showed me this pic of you”) and then their contacts all being hit with exactly the same message.

With personal friends whose tone you are familiar with, whilst annoying, this isn’t met with such damaging effects. But with brands, where Twitter is best utilised for reaching out and making many first-time connections, the worry is that users are likely to open urls from well known brands and companies expecting a special offer or news, only to become infected with the latest bot and risk the loss of valuable personal information.

From a brand point of view this is obviously detrimental. But what follow are also feelings of suspicion, wariness and mistrust, resulting in less connections made from unknown sources – essentially stunting growth by reducing contact expansion. Ultimately still micro-blogging, but to what end?

The nature of Twitter, where a search will publically bring up all tweets with the keyword, brand or username included, invites the negative as well as the positive associations between the people who are interacting with that brand.

Virus-laced tweets directed to you are not just a mare’s nest, but the association with the infected tweet will remain logged without you being able to delete it.

Twitter needs to address this issue eventually. How it tackles this problem, and how the entire internet will cope under the burgeoning virus advancements, remains to be seen.