(ladygaga.tumblr.com)

Lady Gaga's social network, LittleMonsters.com, is in beta, though we're not sure why. The Gaga-themed Pinterest-like site, in production for more than a year, is black and white and red all over. Users become "fans" of each other and bookmark posts as "inspired." It's so Pinterest-y that some bloggers are calling it a ripoff. We eagerly await Farhad Manjoo's review.

The site is the first to use the white label platform made by Backplane, the startup from Gaga manager Troy Carter, which has investment from Google Ventures, SV Angel, Tomorrow Ventures, Founders Fund and others.

With Gaga's rabid fanbase as an automatic audience, it's hard to see how the site could fail. The project has given out 10,000 invites, writes Mashable today, a small fraction of Gaga's 19 million Twitter followers. Worst case, it's another glorified website for Gaga. Best case, Backplane completely usurps Tumblr and Myspace for entertainers and brands and gets bought by Viacom.

Backplane will be hosting a music hackathon at South By Southwest. Coolest startup ever?