What is Social Media?

Social media is the democratization of information, transforming people from content consumers (one-way communication) into members of online communities who are empowered to converse and participate with one another (multi-directional communication).

Social media shifts the marketing paradigm from "Tell Your Audience" to an "Engage and Participate" model rooted in conversations between content creators and community members.

So what is an online community? Here is how several influential bloggers define the term:

"An online community is where a group of people with similar goals or interests connect and exchange information using web tools." (Jeremiah Owyang, Forrester Research)

"A community is a group of people who form relationships over time by interacting regularly around shared experiences, which are of interest to all of them for varying individual reasons." (Mack Collier, The Viral Garden)

"Communities are bodies of people loosely joined together by a common interest that exchange information using web tools." (Shel Israel, Global Neighborhood)

What do the concepts of "social media" and "online community" mean to Synopsys? Fundamentally, it means that we have a huge new opportunity space to engage in effective and meaningful ways with our customers, partners and other key constituencies.

Note that this does not mean "use instead of" our other well-tuned marketing, communications and customer engagement programs – rather social media provides a complementary set of tools and possibilities that have the potential to significantly contribute to our overall marketing mix over time.

As we expand our social media-related programs in the months ahead, our vision is to help reinvent customer interaction in an Internet-enabled world, elevate the Synopsys brand, strengthen our leadership in the electronics value chain and enhance overall customer experience.

Big vision. Big goals. But, hey, we're quite a team and up for the challenge.