Application developers are switching from the social network platform to mobile platforms in 2010, as an extensive survey DM2Pro and Quattro projects. Of the responding developers, some work for advertisers and agencies while others publish or develop apps as a business. For marketers and advertisers, trends are shifting for mobile operating systems and budgeting.

The advertisers that responded to “State of the Industry: APPS,” or the brands that the agency represents, were mostly from the consumer packaged goods, retail and automotive categories.

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Global IT spending by financial services (banking, insurance, and securities and investments) will increase 2.9 percent to $357.4 billion in 2010, according to financial-industry research firm Celent. Spending is expected to reach $393.5 billion by 2012.

IT spending in the financial sector declined 2.5 percent in 2009.

“After a difficult 2009, growth rates are starting to climb across all regions,” said Jacob Jegher, senior analyst with Celent’s Banking Group. “2010 has the potential to be the start of a turnaround, but there is still plenty of uncertainty in the industry and we are not completely out of the woods.”

“European and US financial institutions have been hit particularly hard,” Jegher said.

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After dropping in the second quarter of 2009, global average internet speeds increased in Q3, according to Akamai’s State of the Internet report.

The average global connection speed was 1.7 Mbps, returning the global average to first quarter levels. Nineteen percent of the world’s internet connections are 5 Mbps or greater.

South Korea remained the country with the highest average speed, 14.6 Mbps, nearly twice the speed of the second fastest country, Japan, whose average connection was 7.9 Mbps.

South Korea was also one of two countries in the top ten which posted quarterly gains of over 25 percent, joined by Ireland, whose year-over-year increase in speed was enormous, 73 percent.

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Image via CrunchBase

You know what sort of fell off in the second half of 2009? Twitter stories.

It seemed like once the mass adoption phase of the microblogging service in the first half of the year quieted down, Twitter use plateaued in the second half of the year, giving us a fairly good idea of what the service’s reach would ultimately be.

In social networking news, Facebook’s steady growth overtook Twitter’s headlines, and while Twitter remained one of the year’s top stories, it appeared to hit its peak. Which was kind of disappointing as its competitor continued to pass milestone after milestone .

Twitter usage is notoriously difficult to put into metrics; unlike Facebook, much Twitter activity occurs on third-party apps that make up the rich Twitter ecosystem.

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Global cleantech venture funding fell 33 percent in 2009, according to research from the Cleantech Group and Deloitte. Even with the decline, it remained tech’s strongest sector for funding.

In 2009, the cleantech industry received $5.6 billion in funding, compared to $8.5 billion in 2008. It was the worst year for cleantech venture capital since 2006.

The three biggest sectors for cleantech funding in 2009 were solar ($1.2 billion), transportation ($1.1 billion) and energy efficiency ($1 billion).

The Cleantech Group and Deloitte expect that 2009 totals will increase 5-10 percent when companies finish reporting their annual activity.

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Holiday e-commerce spending rose 4 percent year-over-year in 2009, according to comScore.

U.S. consumers spent $29.1 billion online this holiday season. In 2008, the total online holiday spend was $28 billion.

Do we have another new name day to add to the list? (I’m apparently out of the loop.) The highest day of spending during the 2009 holidays was “Green Tuesday” – Tuesday, December 15th – when $913 million was spent online. The second highest spending day was Cyber Monday, with $887 million.

The week after Green Tuesday saw the biggest jump in holiday spending, as sales the weekend before Christmas rose 13 percent. That’s the biggest noticeable trend from 2009’s figures: many consumers held off making purchases until the final ten days before Christmas.

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IPOs were recovering at the end of 2009, but still have a ways to go to reach pre-recession levels, according to Thomson Reuters and the National Venture Capital Association’s (NVCA) Exit Poll.

“While 2009 was a year many venture capitalists and entrepreneurs would choose to soon forget, the fourth quarter offered signs of hope for the coming year in terms of improved exit activity,” said Mark Heesen, president of the NVCA.

The good news is that IPOs are back at 2007 levels. The bad news is that last two years have been the slowest consecutive years for IPOs since 1974-1975.

There were five venture-based IPOs in Q4 2009, totaling $649.3 million. The total dollar amount was in line with Q2 and Q3 averages, and was more than all of 2008 combined ($470.2 million).

Overall, there were just over twice the number of IPOs in 2009 than there were in 2008 (13 vs. 6), but we are still a far, far cry from 2007, when there were 86. On the positive side, 2009’s average IPO offer amount of $149.4 million was not only double last year’s amount, it is the highest yearly average since the NVCA started tracking the deals in 2003.

“Clearly, we have a long way to go towards a full recovery but we are encouraged by the increasing acquisition values and the number of companies that have filed a registration with the SEC to go public,” Heesen said. “We expect to see a gradual but marked improvement in 2010 and hope to have exponential improvements this time next year.”

Two of the five IPOs were in the IT sector. The two deals were worth $236.2 million. Network-protection-system developer Fortinet, Inc, based in Sunnyvale had the higher exit, raising $156.3 million.

Last night a report on the ethnic makeup of Facebook was released on a note from the Facebook Data Team. After much calculation, the team has determined that though it began with a stronger proportionate presence of individuals with White and Asian backgrounds, it now closer reflects the current online US population.

The conclusion was reached by analyzing members’ last names, since the social networking site does not ask profile questions involving race information. Comparing surnames to data from the US Census Bureau, the Data Team arrived at numbers based on the proportion of each ethnicity that makes up each documented name. Of those named Smith, for example, Census respondents were polled to be 73.35 percent White, 22.22 percent black, and 1.63 percent 2prace (two or more races), to illustrate the three highest incidence rates.

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Experian Hitwise reported today that the number one search term for 2009 was Facebook. That’s really no big surprise, as 5 percent of total internet time is spent on the social networking site.

What is surprising is what happened over at Twitter. The event that was the highest trending topic this year was the Iran elections and the ‘Twitter revolution,’ field reporting and public solidarity with the people of Iran that the microblogging site engendered.

“Among all the keywords, hashtags, and phrases that proliferated throughout the year, one topic surfaced repeatedly,” writes Abdur (no last name given), a researcher at Twitter.

“Twitter users found the Iranian elections the most engaging topic of the year,” Abdur writes. “The terms #iranelection, Iran and Tehran were all in the top-21 of Trending Topics, and #iranelection finished in a close second behind the regular weekly favorite #musicmonday.”

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IDC predicts that more than one billion mobile devices will be used to access the internet in 2013, more than doubling 2009’s 450 million mobile internet users.

To put that in perspective, the global population of total internet users just passed one billion at the beginning of this year.

“With a wealth of information and services available from almost anywhere, Internet-connected mobile devices are reshaping the way we go about our personal and professional lives,” said John Gantz, chief research officer at IDC.

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