You own a small hardware store. You have been in business since 1995 and have always been profitable. You’ve never seen a need to do any marketing or advertising since you were able to stay profitable without those things. Plus, you lack any real understanding of how to use technology and it makes you anxious just thinking about technology or social media. However, your son just graduated from college and came home to live with you for the summer before he starts his new marketing manager job at a big firm. He tells you that you are probably losing a big share of the market by avoiding technology and social media. He also says that many of these items can be implemented very easily, and he would volunteer to continue to manage the social media sites in his spare time even after he starts his new job.

the answer is you.

a  social news website  is an  internet  website  that features  user-posted stories. such stories are ranked based on popularity, as voted on by other users of the site or by website administrators. users typically comment online on the news posts and these comments may also be ranked in popularity. since their emergence with the birth of  web 2.0, social news sites have been used to link many types of information, including news, humor, support, and discussion. all such websites allow the users to submit content and each site differs in how the content is moderated. on the  slashdot  and  fark  websites,  administrators  decide which articles are selected for the front page. on  reddit  and  digg, the articles that get the most votes from the community of users will make it to the front page. many social news websites also feature an online comment system, where users discuss the issues raised in an article. some of these sites have also applied their voting system to the comments, so that the most popular comments are displayed first. some social news websites also have a  social networking  function, in that users can set up a user profile and follow other users' online activity on the website.