Lady Gaga has teamed up with her manager Troy Carter to create a new social startup. The social network called Backplane has already raised over $1 million in a round of funding led by Tomorrow Ventures, the investment firm founded by Google Executive Chairman Eric Schmidt. Gaga, who’s an informal consultant of Backplane, owns 20 percent of the company.

According to the New York Times, the idea for the company sparked after Gaga and Carter met with Steve Jobs to discuss Apple’s music network Ping. Both Gaga and Carter felt that Ping didn’t offer enough integration with other social networks, but that the idea was a good one. Carter consulted his friend Matthew Michelsen, a technology investor and entrepreneur, and asked if he knew about a social platform that helped artists manage their fan base across all social networks, not just one. The pair decided to build their own.

Backplane, which was created by a team of 7 earlier this fall, powers online communities around specific interests such as bands, sports teams, and pop stars like Lady Gaga, with integrated feeds from popular networks like Twitter and Facebook.

Carter, who’s worked with stars like Sean Combs and Notorious B.I.G, is well versed in the world of online promotion. He currently leads Lady Gaga’s digital strategy and has been working with the singer for over 4 years. Unlike many managers, he’s utilized lesser-known social networks to help Gaga remain at the top of fans’ interests and it’s absolutely paying off. The singer has over 10 million Twitter followers and recently worked on an interesting partnership with Zynga for the Facebook game FarmVille.

According to Carter, the Internet is more important than ever when it comes to artist promotion, especially in the wake of the MP3 era where many users download content for free and CDs have become obsolete for many fans. Even for a mega-star like Gaga, the Internet proves to be an invaluable tool for promotion. “There was a time when radio stations wouldn’t play Gaga’s music, because it was considered dance. Outside of live performances, the Internet became our primary tool to help people discover her music,” said Carter. Backplane is supposed to help artists embrace social networks and the Internet like Lady Gaga has.

The social network has yet to be unveiled but I’m anxiously awaiting it’s release.