Lady Gaga: Born This (Digital) Way

By Lisa Arthur Forbes

When Lady Gaga and her team couldn’t find an integrated social media platform that met their specific needs, they did exactly what you would expect these avant-garde trendsetters to do: they decided to “poke the box” and build one themselves.

Now, Lady Gaga’s business manager, Troy Carter, and entrepreneur Matthew Michelsen have joined forces to create Backplane, a hi-tech start-up tasked with designing a digital platform to unite online communities around specific interests.

TechCrunch says Backplane will provide today’s biggest entertainment and sports brands –such as Lady Gaga, other musicians and the NFL –a way to blend (and focus) their various social media presences into one online platform.

Think about that for a moment. Can you imagine the power behind an integrated feed from Facebook, Twitter and other sites?

This is an idea whose time has come, and even though Backplane has yet to be “officially” unveiled, The New York Times is reporting that the start-up already has raised more than $1 million in funding. The group of influential investors includes none other than Lady Gaga herself, who holds a 20 percent stake in the company, and Tomorrow Ventures, the investment firm of Google’s chairman, Eric E. Schmidt.

Full article click here. Also New York Times.