Finding EDA in social mEDiA

I’ve read several articles over the past few years that explore what the fit for social media outlets like Twitter, LinkedIn, Google+, YouTube, etc. are within the EDA industry.

According to the user stats collected by socialmediatoday.com for 2013 social media trends, they found there were over 500 million Twitter users, 500 million Google+ users, over 238 million LinkedIn users, and over 1 billion unique monthly visitors to YouTube. Let’s not forget Facebook, the clear leader with 1.5 billion users.

An interesting demographic stat for these social media sites is related to the ages of those who use them. Why is user age of social media use so interesting particularly for EDA you ask?  Well, in April of 2012,  Printed Circuit Design & Fab published an article entitled “PCB Designers, Rev. 2”, this article provided the annual PCB designer survey results that revealed that “the average age of a printed circuit board designer in the US is in the mid-50s”.

As I looked deeper into the use of social media within this age bracket I find that of the folks in their mid-50’s, only 21% of them use LinkedIn only 13% use Twitter. Gender use within this age bracket was evenly divided 50-50 among males and females on LinkedIn, but female users outnumber male users on Twitter 3 to 2.

No matter what your age, following EDA in social mEDiA is easy and growing year after year and providing very real and measurable benefits. It’s no longer a nicety but a necessity for EDA businesses, to invest in social media. Here at Mentor Graphics we aim to provide valued content including such things as product announcements, free webinars, interactive blogs, user events, relevant industry news and much more.  For example, if you were following us on Twitter @MentorPCB you’d be getting sneak peeks of the next PADS release.

Feel free to submit your comments and thoughts on how you interact with EDA in social media below.  And if you’re not already connected, or following, or subscribed to our social media sites I’d encourage you to get connected today!