(Photo: Coco Rocha/Instagram)

As a supermodel--and here Betabeat can only conjecture--the product you're selling, essentially, is you. Your matchstick stems, all the places you go, your cool attitude = you. Therefore, as with most celebrities (and increasingly regular humans) run-of-the-mill personal brand building on social media is directly tied to revenue.

But even if Coco Rocha's entire extended Canadian family depended on the number of her Instagram followers, you still have to respect the 24-year-old's commitment. We discovered as much this afternoon at panel run by Decoded Fashion hosted on the mouth of a runway at Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week.

Glamour editor-in-chief Cindi Leive, who was moderating the talk (called "Fashion and Tech Discuss the Future"), introduced Ms. Rocha by noting that she had amassed millions of followers on 13 different platforms and was "the first model to surpass 1 million followers on Google+." But Ms. Rocha doesn't just hang around in ghost towns. She also has 4 million followers in China, "where models are bigger than celebrities," through Sino Weibo and Tencent Weibo. And she's active on Vine, the Twitter-owned video sharing app that launched just last month.

"If you’re the first one on a platform, you notice your numbers will grow immensely," Ms. Rocha explained. "And Vine? There’s not many of us on there. Not a lot of models. So who you gonna pick as a model? You’ll pick me. Because I’m your only model." After that, she added, you just watch the dominos fall. "Why does she have so many numbers? I should follow her! I believe that’s how it works," she said modestly, raising and lowering her silver-rimmed stilettos from the ledge of a clear formica stool.

On @shade45 with @realsway and @karolinakurkova! Tune in now! vine.co/v/bvPbt33KXh7

— CocoRocha (@cocorocha) February 12, 2013

She also claimed to manage the enterprise by her lonesome. "My content is from me. It’s not some PR firm that’s deciding to sell other things. It’s me and my voice and I think only I know it best. Some people can pretend to be someone else and that’s okay, great for them."

"You have to be all the platforms," Ms. Rocha added later. "Because the Tumblr followers? They are a cult. The Twitter followers? They are a cult. You think, 'Well, I have Twitter so I’m hitting everyone.' No, you’re not. You need Vine, Viddy, Sino Weibo, Tencent Weibo, Tumblr, Twitter. And all of them have their own identity."

That kind of platform-agnostic gumption earns you high praise--like being called "not just a hanger but a brand all by herself," from Zac Posen in the New York Times, which delved into how Ms. Rocha has been able use her social media presence to secure deals.

Other notables were on the panel this afternoon, such as Tumblr's fashion evangelist Valentine Uhovski and Kevin Kollenda, founder of Two Hustlers, the agency "instrumental in bringing Lady Gaga to Barney’s last year." (Gaga collaborator Nicola Formichetti is his cofounder.) With his charcoal suit and graffiti baseball hat, Mr. Kollenda certainly looked the part. But it was hard to take our eyes off Ms. Rocha, the only panelist with an iPhone on the table, inches within reach.

She appeared from back stage in an orange sherbert-colored blazer and an orange sherbert blouse with gold buttons that caught the light and set off her goth-y red hair. Beneath her black skinny jeans, the heel of her shoes looked as thin and lethal as a knitting needle. We also detected some classic symptoms of social media withdrawl: the girl was fidgety--pursing her lips, crossing and uncrossing her ankles, twisting her hands together into a tangle of black nail polish.

"I'm talking about the power houses," she said, leaning in toward Ms. Leivie explaining that the old industry stalwarts are reluctant to embrace tech like 3D-printing or laser etching, even though that is the direction fashion is heading.

Asked if she had any advice for social media aspirants, Ms. Rocha suggested making the content you share beautiful. "We’re in an industry where we’re all about beautiful. So Instagram, like I said fuzzy photos don’t work. As much as you’re saying, 'I’m at Michael Kors and I’m front row'--fantastic, good for you. But they don’t care about that fuzzy photo. You have to make sure that it is in fact great content. So for me, I take 10, 15 photos. I filter 5, 6. I pick one. That is a lot of time."

We suppose that means this isn't her Snapchat?

Mark Zuckerberg's dog, Beast. (Facebook)

Facebook is finally following up on its plan to eliminate the phenomenon of fake page or profile 'likes' produced by malware or deception. As CNN reports, this has caused noticeable dips in likes on a number of popular pages, such as those for Lady Gaga, The Simpsons and Zynga's page for Texas HoldEm Poker. We tried and failed to see if the page for Zuck's dog Beast had taken a hit during the purge, but with 989,000 likes and counting, we think the adorable Hungarian Sheepdog can rest easy, for now.

Ms. Huffington (flickr.com/worldeconomicforum)

The post-lunch session of the Guardian Activate Summit kicked off with an interview between Guardian U.S. editor in chief Janine Gibson and a woman whom Ms. Gibson called "the Madonna of our industry:" why Arianna Huffington, of course. Ms. Huffington, who donned a smart navy blue blazer and a perfectly coifed blond bob, introduced herself with some opening remarks about what she called the "fetishization of social."

"The fetishization of social is celebrating something going 'trending' or going 'viral' without asking what it is that's going trending or viral," said Ms. Huffington. "We all need to do a better job of asking those questions, otherwise we’re going to find ourselves in the same dangerous area that mainstream media have found themselves in, where everything is breaking news. Donald Trump endorsing Mitt Romney, Balloon Boy, all these things."

We found this comment especially pointed coming from Ms. Huffington, as The Huffington Post just tweeted, "Miley Cyrus saves a dog left outside of Walmart," a piece that has all the classic elements of a viral story (major celebrity + cute animal + feel-good component) without any of the explanation. We really do need to be asking why Miley Cyrus' dog saving abilities are going viral, wouldn't you agree?

After her lengthy self-introduction, Ms. Huffington fielded a few questions from Ms. Gibson. How did you feel when Obama made the joke about the Huffington Post winning the Pulitzer at the White House Correspondents Dinner, she asked?

"Any time the President of the United States jokes about your Pulitzer it’s kind of a good joke for me," quipped Ms. Huffington.

As always, there were the usual questions about whether The Huffington Post "steals" articles by aggregating them.

"The HuffPost is two things," replied Ms. Huffington. "It’s a journalistic enterprise--it employs 500 full-time journalists--and it is a platform. Even if I had a trillion dollar budget, I would always make sure Huffpost is a platform. We live in a link economy, and the joy of a link economy is that we can promise readers the best of the web, whether we produce it or link."

"Ubiquity is the new promiscuity," she added. "When people say they want to launch a site to show their stuff, that train has left the station long ago. Now it’s about, 'Can you put your stuff everywhere?'"

Ms. Huffington also said that maintaining a bootstrappy spirit is key to continued success. "I want us to keep that startup spirit even as we’re growing and scaling, because that’s really at the heart of staying ahead," she said.

Do you see any Lady Gagas coming to usurp your Madonna title, wondered Ms. Gibson?

"I think there can be room for Madonna and Lady Gaga," emphasized Ms. Huffington.

Quietly, almost as if she didn't want the audience to hear, she added, "It’s a very manly way of looking at things, like who has the biggest swinging dick."

Check out our coverage of the morning 2012 Guardian Activate Summit session with LinkedIn cofounder Reid Hoffman here.

The offending technology (via Twitter)

As far as we can gather, Lady Gaga's entire public persona is a celebration of newness and novelty. Sure, there's healthy dose of recycled Euro dance beats and a certain nostalgia for the chameleon-like stylings of one Madonna Ciccone, but this is not a chick who wears the same outfit, much less the same flank steak, twice.

Even Gaga's early-stage startup, Backplane, has taken the innovative approach of actually making money before raising millions from investors.

So what, pray tell, is she doing with an 8500 series Blackberry in this Twitpic from earlier this afternoon? (A tipster, who we have it on good authority is "autistic about these things" believes it's an 8520, to be exact.)

If public admonishment from a tech blog isn't enough to shame you into an upgrade, what about some competitive spirit? Did you see Kesha? Girl is rocking a 9900!

(Hat tip: Pitchfork Reviews Reviews!)

(David Jacobs on Mixel)

CEO Matthew Michaelson told the WSJ that the Palo Alto and L.A.-based company has spent less than $1 million getting to its beta launch for Little Monsters, Lady Gaga's social network and the first product from Backplane. From the outside, the company seems tight; a representative apologized repeatedly for the state of the beta, begging us to remember it's a work in progress. But when we checked out the site, it looked pretty damn smooth. If you need an additional vote of confidence, notorious bubble-buster Philip Kaplan (FuckedCompany) congratulated the team.

It already has revenue, Mr. Michaelson said, although he didn't say how. The money will be used to woo top talent and a series B could occur "rather quickly," he said.

(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?

But first we had to ask, based on evidence, would he consider Taylor Swift something of a personal muse? "Isn't she a muse to everyone?" he wondered. Betabeat mentioned a surprisingly rousing rendition of "Fifteen" performed by some (adult) friends at karaoke night over the weekend. "She won't be denied," Mr. Vinh concluded.

As for the app at large, "Remixes are very popular," noted Mr. Vinh, "Some of the remix threads get very long." The last time we spoke, Mr. Vinh had pointed out that, for your average amateur, an art-making app without a social element was doomed to fizzle. "The threads are conversations, and when you open one up, it's a little like walking up to a few people chatting at a party. People feel compelled to jump in and join."

"They create a spur-of-the-moment opportunity to create something," he added, "Because you have pieces and ideas to work with and add to or subtract from."

He also noticed that early users were not reusing individual pieces as much as he and his co-founder Scott Ostler had expected. "Most of the images that go into mixels are pulled from the Popular tab or the Web Image Search tab (within the edit screen)...What we had thought was that people would also browse other people's mixels and say, 'Hey, I want to use that in a mixel of my own.'" A possible solution to that, he proposed a 'drawer feature', "So that when you're looking at someone else's mixel, and you see a piece you like, you can tuck it away for later."

Mr. Vinh declined to share the number of users just yet, pointing out that, "We're a creation app on iPad, so we don't get the exposure that people will get to a Web site." In that same vein, times of usage also differ, "We see a lot of activity at night, as people leave their iPads at home during the day, for the most part. And a lot of activity on Saturday, too. So it's very different from the Web, which a lot of people will surf during work. We've also heard a lot of people say, 'I'm having Mixel withdrawal' when they leave their iPads at home.'" (That reminds us, we have some Words With Friends games to dominate . . .)

If you're suffering from Mixel withdrawl yourself, here are five of Mr. Vinh's favorites, followed by five of our own.

Tumblr's servers must be quivering in fear. Lady Gaga, one of the most-followed people on Twitter, just joined Tumblr, the start-up's fashion director Rich Tong announced yesterday. Ms. Gaga tested the water by tumbling seven posts in a row, but hasn't mentioned her new blog on Twitter or added a link to her website. Maybe she's trying to give Tumblr some breathing room before her fans crash the company's servers like they did Amazon.

While skill as a curator of online treasures is one of the essential skills for a modern web personality, sharing short links that direct fans away from their Facebook or Twitter feed is, in a deep sense, counter intuitive for celebs. Shouldn't the attention stay with the star?

Enter Bre.ad, a custom link shortener funded by Lady Gaga's manager and digital guru Troy Carter. Like bit.ly, Bre.ad allows users to create a brief, twitter friendly hyperlink in place of a long URL. But when users click through a Bre.ad link, they are brought to a splash page, where they spend five seconds reading a custom message and viewing a branded image, before heading off to their actual destination.

So long as the tech sector stays red hot, we are going to be seeing an increasing number of these pop projects. While the pitch might sound appealing to a celeb on paper, the end user experience is quite frustrating. Who wants to click a link, only to spend five seconds, an eternity in web time, staring at the same tweet against a billboard background, before landing on the actual link?

Bread CEO Alan Chan has spent the last four years living on the LES and building a clothing company, Arbitrage. He cooked up the idea for Bre.ad because he was frustrated by the way self promotion worked on Twitter and Facebook.

Chan will have a big advantage out of the gate. Social media stars like Lady Gaga and 50 Cent are going to drive a ton of attention to the service right away. Big brands like Pepsi have already signed on to the service as well. Perhaps used judiciously, Bre.ad could be a good addition to the arsenal of SM savvy celebs.

But it clearly has not been user tested for mass adoption. The service bills as one of it's key features, the fact that users can type Bre.ad in front of any URL and get a custom short link. But that is nowhere near as easy as simply copying and pasting the link, which is now automatically cropped in Twitter or Tweetdeck.

AMUSEBALLS. When Color came out, Jimmy Fallon used it to give out tickets to his show. Mr. Fallon, who periodically features gadget maven Josh Topolsky on his program and does the occasional bit about iPhone apps, wants to be the next actor-investor a la Ashton Kutcher, Betabeat heard today. Mr. Fallon heard a pitch from a local founder recently about first-round investing in an iPhone game, we're told, after the founder's pre-launch app got a bunch of mainstream press. Dude follows Gary Vee, Fred Wilson, Leo Laporte, Kevin Rose on Twttr. Any other start-ups talking to Jimmy? Admit.

WEIRD THAT THERE IS SO MUCH CELEBRITY+TECH NEWS TODAY, but we hear Lady Gaga is going to release a Chrome extension. It would be an official Google-Lady Gaga Chrome extension, we're told, and some New Yorkers are in the running to build it. Right now there is an unofficial extension that displays all Ms. Gaga's tweets. Our minds! They are blown!

HIDE YR PUTERS. A cautionary tale: One entrepreneur who rents dedicated office space at General Assembly had his laptop stolen off his desk a few weeks ago, a friend of the victim tells Betabeat. "It concerned me to hear about the incident but I'm not interested in damaging the reputation of GA," source said. But, he said, "I don't mind the general public knowing they should be careful, even in friendly atmospheres."  Fortunately, the solution is simple!

SPEAKING OF THE ASSEMBLY. The Annex has been annexed! Start-ups including, we hear, Food52, Jibe and Easel moved downstairs from their secluded 7th floor outpost. "They were leasing it from another company in the building and the lease ran out sooner than they thought, I believe," a source told us.

CAN'T STOP TURNTABLING. Turntable.fm is the latest, greatest addictive thing to hit Facebook-only beta from New York. "It's like a sugar high," one developer said this morning (he was also referring to the attendant crash). The company formerly known as StickyBits downsized and started working on turntable.fm in January, Betabeat learned upon ambushing the company in its Union Square office. Things are going well, they said, but they'd like to work out the bugs before doing any interviews. The Silicon Alley-born Coding Soundtrack room was until recently the most popular; now it's some random room in Germany, we're told, due to a write-up in a German music blog, and over-Skrillexing by the New York coders.

LUCKY STARS. TechStars announces 30 finalists tonight. That's out of about 1,000 applications. Yep. Good luck.

FREE INTERNET WEEK? We're seeing and hearing VIPs slangin' free Internet Week passes left and right. How many of these things are there?