The biggest names in technology have normally been unflinching champions for the rights of same-sex couples.

So social commerce is a unicorn, a beautiful but imaginary idea; or that’s the headline finding of a brilliant (free) report is just out by Monetate on social commerce – with Mitch Joel and Jay Baer as contributors. If you look at the numbers, rather than the hype, you see that social media drives just 1.55% of e-commerce traffic and has a conversion rate of less than three-quarters of one percent (.71%).   Using social media for direct response marketing sucks – with the logical conclusion is that ”social media participation is over-hyped and disproportionately resourced for ecommerce websites”.

Some of the Internet’s most notable personalities are bringing attention to the need for immigration reform in a 36-hour social media marathon, The March for Innovation . It’s an issue we know our readers care about, so we’re thrilled to give you the opportunity to join part-time superhero , full-time mayor of Newark, definitely-maybe Senate candidate , and one of The Most Innovative People In Democracy , Cory Booker, in a rousing town hall. Mayor Booker and I will be answering questions on Twitter and responding to a few reader questions in our comments (officially begins Noon PT).

With years of digital exhaust now behind us – over 240 billion photos on Facebook, 8 billion on Flickr , and not to mention the 72 hours of video uploaded to YouTube every month – we’re now transitioning to a time when we’re in need of smarter tools for organizing and accessing our personal data archives. Only a few companies, so far, have dared to step into this space because the technical challenges its presents

SparkLabs , the startup accelerator that wants to inject South Korea’s startup ecosystem with Silicon Valley expertise, announced its second intake today. Its latest class is an international lineup of companies that represent a variety of sectors and are at widely different stages of funding, from bootstrapped financing to those that have closed a Series A round.

Forget B2C, B2B or even P2P – the future is M2M – machine to machine communication. And forget virtual world vs

Urturn , the social expressions platform that soft-launched as stealthily as possible last year by intentionally hiding under a really boring name , is getting ready to turn the volume up to 11 to start seriously recruiting teens and trend-setters to its meme-stuffed, fashion-friendly, music-loving platform.

While we don’t have all of the details on the new Xbox Live features announced at today’s Xbox One launch, it’s clear that Microsoft is going all-in when it comes to social and multiplayer gaming. First, they are upping the number of dedicated servers for online play from 15,000 to 300,000 and nearly all of your content and game data will be store in the cloud.

Does my music do better on Facebook or Twitter?

Features: Runs Ubuntu out of the box 13.3-inch screen 256 GB SSD Intel Core i7 Processor MSRP: $1,549 with rebate Pros: Excellent Ubuntu performance out of the box Thin and light 12 second boot time Cons: No SD card slot Limited software choices Graphics card slightly underpowered Dude, you got a Linux-powered Dell! In all the years I’ve reviewed laptops I’ve never been as pleasantly surprised by an Ultrabook as I was with the Dell XPS 13 Developers Edition. This ultrathin, ultralight SSD laptop originally came in Windows flavor but, much to my surprise, I far prefer the Ubuntu edition of this device