My column in today’s Chicago Sun-Times deals with the new wave of explosive growth among health information websites. The trend is fueled by the growing number of mid-life Americans who see the web as a primary source of guidance on health matters. Earlier post on Focalyst research documenting the trend is here.

So, that’s how it is: CBS News legend Walter Cronkite will be contributing weekly commentary to “Daily Cafe,” a live two-hour program produced by Retirement TV out of Washington. He’ll focus on politics, education, healthcare, foreign policy and the environment, according to the announcement.

Baltimore ad agency Planit is posting a series of podcasts focused on the Boomer market to promote its Mature Market division. The first program features an interview with Susan Ayers Walker, technology writer for AARP.org and founder of the SmartSilvers Alliance. Susan talks about ecommerce and other consumer technologies, and how to tailor campaigns to Boomers. Planit plans to distribute the podcast series on iTunes, and will be doing four more episodes in the monhs ahead. Note to Planit: cool idea, but your “Mature Market” group needs a different name. “Mature” won’t fly in the Boomer space.

The holiday shopping season is swinging into gear, and Baby Boomer bargain hunters are fueling a big gain in traffic at e-commerce sites. Traffic monitoring service Hitwise reported a 56 percent surge in marketshare for the week ended November 3rd. The gain was driven mainly by online shoppers over age 45 with the share of traffic from that age demo up 38 percent compared with a year ago.

“As we enter the holiday shopping season, consumers are beginning to research potential gift purchases and compare prices earlier than last year especially with retailers beginning to roll out seasonal promotions,” said Heather Dougherty, director of research at Hitwise. “Baby boomers are the main visitors of comparison shopping websites and our search term data indicates that consumer electronics continue to be popular amongst these comparison shoppers.

Biggest marketshare gainer in teh 45+ category was Shopzilla, where traffic was up 58 percent during the measured period, compared with a year ago. Shopzilla is owned by diversfied media company E.W. Scripps.

Detail on the Hitwise study, including rankings of the top e-commerce sites and brands, is here.

BusinessWeek takes a look at social networking sites for Boomers, zeroing in on Eons and TBD. The verdict: TBD “gets it” on Web 2.0 strategy and implementation, and Eons doesn’t. Eons, BW writes, is “reminiscent of another web era,” with big-time venture funding, tv advertising and market research; TBD, by contrast, relies much more on the gut sense of founder Robin Wolaner and staff–with plans to iterate as they go:

That’s much the way some of the most successful Web 2.0 startups, including Yelp, Digg, and Facebook, were born. TBD is a lot like those companies in other key ways: It’s housed in a dingy, anonymous building in San Francisco’s South of Market district. Desks are scattered around a wide open space, there’s a buzz of activity, and everyone is dressed casually, many in TeeBeeDee T-shirts. The only difference: Almost everyone working there is over 40.

Which underscores another key Web 2.0 hallmark: authenticity. Every great social networking site was built by someone the community can trust and relate to. Early on, college kids and recent graduates could identify with Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg. And what early MySpace hipsters didn’t have a little affinity for the ubiquitous, automatic first “friend,” MySpace co-founder Tom Anderson, even if he was lying about his age? Building a site by listening to hundreds of thousands of vocal members is hard work, but the more a site is built for you and your peers, the easier it is to understand what they have to say.

My Sun-Times column on TBD and other Boomer 2.0 sites is here. You can read my Q&A with Robin here.

AARP will add social networking to AARP.org as part of an overall redesign expected to be completed early next year. Networking will be “a key component” of the overhaul, confirms Dave Irwin, spokesman for AARP Illinois. “Our members are tech-savvy and they’re looking for ways to network with one another,” he said. Social networking features were previewed for attendees of AARP’s big Life@50 event last month in Boston.

It’s no surprise AARP is getting on the Web 2.0 bandwagon. The association is watching social networking challengers like Eons emerge as serious online competition. Eons traffic was running close to AARP’s for several months, although AARP has pulled ahead again in August and September. Data from Compete shows Eons unique visitors at 788,605 in September, compared with 1,759,000 at AARP. Social networking is a great way to expand content on a site and attract viral buzz.

Would AARP members socialize on the association’s site? Maybe. AARP does get huge turnout at events like Life@50; interlacing real-world events with virtual networking can be powerful.