Today, Backplane announced it closed a Series A round of financing with new investors Sequoia Capital, Greylock Discovery Fund, Battery Ventures, Formation 8, Advance/Newhouse Investment Partnership an affiliate of Conde Nast, as well as continued participation from Google Ventures, Founders Fund Angel, Menlo Ventures, SV Angel, i/o Ventures, and a group of individual investors. The financing accelerates the expansion of Backplane's engineering and development teams.

Founded in 2011, Backplane unites people around interests, affinities and movements. The first Backplane community, Lady Gaga's #LittleMonsters (http://littlemonsters.com/) is scaling as a private beta site, with plans for a public release in the spring of 2012. Additional Backplane communities will launch throughout the year.

"We are thrilled to add an extraordinary group of investors and industry leaders who have helped pioneer game-changing technology businesses to our Series A," said Matt Michelsen, co-founder and CEO of Backplane. "With this new financing, we will expand beyond #LittleMonsters with additional top tier communities and continue to scale with world-class technical talent."

A New Type of Social Corridor

Social media consumers are seeking new and more meaningful ways to connect and engage with each other. Backplane fills a gap in the current social spectrum by empowering sharing and conversation that is effortless but not automatic.

"Backplane is a new type of social corridor. With the inherent benefit of seeding the community with the social network effects of Lady Gaga's #LittleMonsters, we believe Backplane is positioned for rapid scale," said co-founder of Backplane and Atom Factory CEO Troy Carter.

Cortex Social Sharing Platform Acquired by Backplane

Along with closing the new round of financing, Backplane completed the acquisition of the i/o Ventures' start-up Cortex. Created by Joey Primiani, co-founder of Backplane, Cortex is a web-based sharing platform. With a download of the Cortex browser extension and one click, Cortex enables anyone to share and send content to dozens of social networks, online platforms and mobile destinations. Backplane's social syndication is powered by Cortex.

About Backplane

Founded in 2011 by Matt Michelsen, Troy Carter, Alex Moore and Joey Primiani, Backplane is a Palo Alto based start-up uniting people around interests, affinities and movements. A new type of social corridor, Backplane is home to many social communities including Lady Gaga's #LittleMonsters. Backplane investors include: Sequoia Capital, Greylock Discovery Fund, Battery Ventures, Advance/Newhouse Investment Partnership, Google Ventures, TomorrowVentures, Formation 8, Founders Fund Angel, Menlo Ventures, SV Angel, Lerer Ventures, Vast Ventures, Metamorphic Ventures, WGI Group, and individual investors.