Legendary pollsters Nielsen have released their data concerning the growth of online video in 2008, and the results are, to say the least, surprising. According to the findings, nearly 60% of videos loaded from sites such as YouTube and DailyMotion are from people above the age of 35. Younger viewers, on the other hand, tend to watch more diversified content more often. “Initially, it is a bit shocking,” writes the team on the official Nielsen blog, Connecting the Dots. “But the truth of the matter is that video has already reached popularity to the point that the video universe, in broad terms, looks much like the overall Internet audience.”

Entrepreneur, sports executive, and generally polarizing figure Mark Cuban has a few interesting things to say when it comes to the future of Yahoo. According to the Dallas Mavericks owner, the solution to Yahoo’s financial woes is simple — buy up the competition like there is no tomorrow. “Yahoo has a very simple business. Generate traffic and monetize it,” writes Cuban. “Their strategy should be to acquire every and any company that makes their traffic, services, content or monetization stronger.” If all goes well, he theorizes, Yahoo won’t need another company like Microsoft to bail them out. It would also prove once and for all that the company might not be as “washed up” as many think. “Yahoo has the opportunity to be the ultimate next generation media company. Google does one thing well, search. Yahoo is and should be the best at everything else. It just has to stop being afraid of its own shadow.”

Elsewhere, Twitter is the latest major media concern to sign on to Google’s new Friend Connect service. Users can now use their Twitter IDs to access everything the Friend Connect universe has to offer, from Google Doc to AOL Instant Messenger and everything in between. The service also adds your Twitter contacts as friends automatically, making it easy to stay in touch no matter which service is in use. The addition of Twitter is big news for the fledgling service, which has to compete with both MySpaceID and Facebook Connect. While many within the industry applaud the new Google/Twitter partnership, some wonder if the existence of three “universal login services” is even necessary. The new, Twitter-centric Friend Connect is available now.

In other Google-related news, the search engine giant has begun to make a few changes to its Google Suggest feature. Instead of providing a series of “related searches,” Suggest now simply provides a sponsored link that takes the user directly to the site. Full-fledged advertisements have also been spotted, but these links do not interfere with the normal Suggest listings. At press time, the new “intsa-link” technology is active for only established organizations (UPS, for example) and news stories. While beta testers have been working with the new addition for a few days now, it is as of yet unknown when the feature will hit the general population.

Finally, we have Zannel. Zannel is based around the idea that iPhone users need a microblogging service of their very own. Like Twitter, the service lets users send short messages back-and-forth at rapid speed. Unlike the name brand equivalent, however, users can use the included map to see what other activity is going on around them. In addition to the root program, the map picks up Twitter and Flickr usage as well, making it easy to find new things and people. Easy to use and set up, Zannel is perfect for anyone who wants something a bit more “technologically advanced” from their portable microblogging client. Zannel is available now for all users.