Baby Boomers expect that technology will help them live longer and keep them better connected, according to several complementary studies. Socially speaking, this section of the population are cultivating their existing relationships and creating new ones at unique rates compared to other age groups.

“Creating and renewing personal connections online is the biggest draw for these boomers,” said Lisa E. Phillips, eMarketer senior analyst and author of the new report, “Boomers and Social Media .” About 47 percent of baby boomers who use the Internet are members of a social network, she says. The contacts that they make on these networks include family, friends and colleagues.

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Disappointment and a little elation are proliferating after the release of Apple’s iPad. Hype and conjecture were clouds of flocculence preceding the release date, only to congeal into a giant iPhone. Looking forward to the coming reception by regular consumers, who will be the ones who will actually define this new device as a success or failure, begs the question: What do consumers really want from their technology?

The Philips Center for Health and Well-being released a study this month which asked US men and women what activities are made better by technology, as well as what features are of importance in the same.

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The latest study from the Nielsen company shows that social networking is becoming the number one activity on the Web in terms of time spent, averaging five-and-a-half hours per user per month in December 2009. It’s 82% more time than one year ago and is still growing. It’s interesting to note that the other biggest time-consuming activities on the web are blogs, IM and online gaming: these are all about connections between people. The growth of status updating (as 33% of social network users already update their status at least one time a week according to Forrester’s latest study) with Facebook and Twitter as stars will create a new web within the World Wide Web.

Two examples to confirm this evolution: the experiment “Behind closed doors on the Net,” led by French-Canadian radio journalists, should conclude the same thing: even if it’s not perfect, the new kind of interaction and sharing provided by social networking makes sense and can become a new level of knowledge and comprehension of the world. The second example is the latest moves by the two big players in search, Google and Microsoft, which signed agreements with Twitter and/or Facebook to integrate the feeds in their results and make money out of this new kind of data.

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I spend infinitely more time on social networks in 2009 than I did in 2008, as did most people, according to Nielsen.

Globally, time spent on social networks increased an average of 2.5 hours per month between December 2008 and December 2009, a growth of 82 percent year-over-year, the research firm announced last Friday.

In December of 2008, people spent an average of just under 3 hours and 4 minutes per month on social networks; in December 2009, the total time jumped to 5 hours and 35 minutes per month.

Obviously, Facebook accounts for most of this time, but it’s amazing to see that the amount of time spent on social networks since the days of static MySpace pages. Sixty-seven percent of global internet users visited Facebook last year, and those who use the site end up spending more than six hours per month on it.

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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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