More than 300,000 mobile Apps have been developed in the past three years, according to MobiThinking.com, and they’ve been downloaded 10.9 billion times. Another tech source, Flurry Blog, puts the number of App downloads at 40 billion.

The point is, a lot of people are downloading a lot of Apps. Flurry Blog also says that since 2007, more than 500 billion Apple and Android smartphones and tablets have been activated and projects that number to surge past 1 billion by the end of this year.

Further, smartphone and tablet users now spend over an hour and half a day using Apps, the tech blog reports. Though the growth rate of time spent on Apps has slowed (15% increase from June to December 2011, compared to 23% growth from December 2010 to June 2011), the trend is still rising, with the growth driven by an increase in the number of App sessions rather than longer sessions. “Consumers are using their Apps more frequently,” Furry Blog says.

Developing an App  can be resource-intensive, and not all companies have the right type of information, service or entertainment to offer in App form. If that’s the case for your brand, you should still seriously consider a mobile advertising and marketing strategy. MobiThinking cites 6 billion cellular subscriptions worldwide as of January 2012; 1.2 billion of those are mobile-broadbrand.

Petfood Industry is now available as an App for Android smartphones as well as Apple devices (iPhones and iPads). It features current and past magazine issues, latest news headlines, petfood product information and more. Search for “Petfood Industry” in the Android Market or the iTunes store.

Social media is  a critical component of digital marketing. Earlier this year, comScore, an online and digital tracking firm, released a report showing that nearly everyone in the US who is online—a whopping 98%—uses social media. That usage equates to US females spending an average 7.9 hours a month on social media and US males spending six hours.

The report, “It’s a Social World: Top 10 Need-to-Knows About Social Networking and Where It’s Headed,” included global data, too, according to Folio: magazine:

• Facebook reaches 55% of the world’s audience, and its 800 million users account for one of every seven minutes spent online overall;
• Twitter reaches one in 10 people online worldwide, a 59% increase year over year;
• LinkedIn, used by professionals, is now the fourth largest social network worldwide (it has a petfood industry group);
• Tumblr, while fairly new, registered 172% growth last year and is now the 12th largest social network; and
• Google+, also new, already has 65 million users or 5% of the global social networking audience.

While many of these millions of people worldwide are posting trivial comments about celebrities or what they ate for breakfast, no doubt some are also your customers (or potential customers) who might be posting comments—positive and negative—about your brand or products. And people with similar interests look to such comments and posts when deciding what to buy. An Opinion Research survey showed 61% of respondents check reviews, blogs and other forms of customer feedback online before buying a new product or service, according to blogger Kim Hart on WashingtonPost.com.

Do you know who is saying what about your products, brands or company online? Do you have a social media strategy to at least influence those conversations? (See a social media session during Petfood Forum 2012.)