Lady Gaga’s community web platform, Backplane, launches in extreme beta

Despite its somewhat awful name, Backplane, a new community web platform, is likely to get plenty of attention when it actually launches. That’s because its public face is Lady Gaga and its investors include all the usual, high profile, deep -pocketed suspects: Eric Schmidt’s Tomorrow Ventures, Lerer, Menlo, and SV Angel, just to name... several. Though it is not very close to launch yet, TechCrunch has been given exclusive early access to Backplane, and says that it’s something like a cross between “Pinterest, Tumblr, Canvas, and Ning,” that it’s “highly visual,” and “potentially highly engaging,” too. Sign us up! Well -- you can possibly sign yourself up, at least, as TechCrunch is offering its readers early access to Backplane right now (though to be honest, we bet those invites are already long gone). The CEO of Backplane says they expect to fully launch in a few months.