Celebrity Tech Investors Lady Gaga

Investment: Gaga recently became a major shareholder in Backplane, a platform that connects music and sports stars with their fans across various social networks. Backplane has raised approximately $1 million from a group of investors led by Google's chairman, Eric Schmidt.

Background: Backplane was co-founded by Lady Gaga's business manager, Troy Carter. Last year, Carter and Lady Gaga met with Apple's Steve Jobs to discuss Ping, Apple's newly launched music social network. After Gaga expressed concern about Ping's lack of integration with social media sites, Carter decided to work with tech investor and entrepreneur Matthew Michelsen to develop a separate site.

Fun fact: Backplane is not Lady Gaga's first trip on the technology merry-go-round. In May, she worked with game maker Zynga to release a FarmVille extension called GagaVille: Users complete tasks to unlock downloads of her songs, as well as virtual items like unicorns and crystals.

Number of Twitter followers: 12.9 million (@ladygaga)

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