We all know how popular musician Lady Gaga is, but regardless of the popularity of her music she’s done something that not many other artists can say. She has built a sustainable and massive community around herself. She even gave her fans a name, “Little Monsters”, which they’ve embraced rabidly.

At the moment, Lady Gaga has the most numbers of followers on Twitter with 19,049,716 and an astounding 47,725,846 likes on Facebook. The quick math says that’s over 66M separate accounts between the two services that want to interact with all things Gaga. Other than Justin Bieber, we’ve never seen that type of engagement surrounding anyone on any platform.

Is Gaga outgrowing existing social networks? While Twitter has a 140 character restraint on messages and Facebook pages only let you do so much, it appears that one company has decided to create a site that is all Gaga all the time.

The company is called Backplane and one of its co-founders happens to be Lady Gaga’s manager, Troy Carter. Rather than sitting back and finding ways to draw attention to Lady Gaga’s accounts on social networks, the company has released her own, aptly named “Little Monsters“, which is a cross between Facebook, Pinterest, and yes, even MySpace.

Exclusivity and star power

The site is in beta right now and is invite-only now. To say the least, it’s the hottest ticket on the web for Lady Gaga fans and if I considered myself a “Little Monster” I’d probably be super excited to be included. While I’m not a huge Lady Gaga fan, I can recognize the trend that Backplane may be starting with this site. Why generate traffic, interest, and interaction on other platforms if you have the star power to have your own?

While musicians have had official websites for some time now, they haven’t had a place to intimately interact with their biggest fans. By building on that intimate exchange, you can keep fans at bay while you’re working on a new album, and use your platform to break sales records just by controlling all of the outreach and interaction.

For example, one user on the Little Monsters site decided to get a tattoo with the name of the site on her wrist. Of course, Lady Gaga herself “liked” the post, which caused the comment section to go berzerk:

What we’re seeing is a new breed of marketing supported by emerging technology. Can you imagine how successful a platform based around say, Michael Jackson or even Madonna would have been? With the artists themselves reaching out to its fanbase with videos, posts, and comments, they’re taking the idea of a “fan” to a whole new level. For those that adore Lady Gaga, being on Little Monsters is like getting an invitation to hang out at her house.

Do artists need Twitter and Facebook anymore?

While it’s unknown who Backplane will roll this type of site out for next, focusing on the technology behind the scenes and retrofitting the platform for the actual stars who are using it is a brilliant business model. You don’t have to worry about Twitter going down or Facebook rolling out a new feature that everyone doesn’t like, the artist is in control.

Twitter and Facebook are a great place to cultivate a fanbase, and without question the virality of shared content won’t have artists jumping ship just yet, but I imagine that in a few years, these artists will be hosting platforms of their own, like Little Monsters, and pushing content to these big social networks.

The company will be holding what it’s calling the “Managers Hack” at SXSW this year, which is inviting hackers to come out and build cool things to further music distribution. The company has the team, and the backing to turn the music industry on its ear, and it all goes back to building a fantastic community.

While traffic stats can be a tricky thing, one thing they’re good for is to judge growth trends. According to a new report by web traffic analyst Compete, Google+ saw impressive growth towards the end of 2011.

Google’s social network, which has come under fire since its heavy integration in Google’s main product, search, saw nearly half as many unique visitors as Twitter did in December of 2011.

Compete says that Twitter had 40,411,065 unique visitors during that month, and Google+ had an impressive 20M during the same time-frame.

After seeing a slight dip in visitors in October of last year, it looks like Google+ righted the ship and had a strong end of the year, which is good news for Google since it’s clearly putting all of its social eggs into the Google+ basket.

The below chart shows the traffic statistics for Google+ since Compete started tracking them, which was as soon as the site became public:

In addition to Google+ becoming more popular as a social destination, Compete shares that its +1 feature which is embedded on a variety of blogs and other external sites saw a rise in popularity as well. To grab those numbers, Compete tracked the subdomain for the +1 button, which is http://plusone.google.com, and saw over 40M uniques in December 2011 (the feature was only widely released in November):

While we should all take these numbers with a grain of salt, its clear that Google+ grabbed a solid userbase and continues to trend upwards in popularity when it comes to monthly unique visitors. While the site is nowhere near the traffic that Facebook sees on a daily basis, the company will definitely continue to push the product forward and we’ll be watching.

If you’ve been paying attention to the web lately, or the special lady in your life according to its demographics, you might know that the curation service Pinterest is on fire. The site lets you add interesting things you find on the web to a virtual pinboard to share with your friends.

Trapit on the other hand is a service that launched in November that does the searching for you, based on keywords having to do with your interests. The two services might be a match made in heaven for pinning when paired together.

I spoke with Trapit co-founder & Chief Product Officer Hank Nothhaft today about that very topic, along with how Trapit is doing since its launch. He shared some interesting stats with me, and says the site has had 3M unique users since launch, and those users save 10 searches on average, which the company calls “traps”. The site also signs up an impressive 20k unique users a day.

Today, the service has launched a simple integration with Pinterest with a big payoff for users of both sites.

Let Trapit find cool things to pin

When you sign up for Trapit, all you have to do is enter a search phrase and the site the will find relevant news and sites on the web that match it. The sources are vetted, so you won’t get a bunch of junk and spam like when you use Google Alerts for a similar reason.

More importantly, you can interact with the things that Trapit finds and just by giving it a thumbs up or down, the service learns a bit more about your tastes and refines future search results you to better suit you.

In the example above, I’ve told Trapit to find stories for me about the Super Bowl, and within seconds, the results start pouring in. I can save that search as a “trap”, and the service will continually find me new things about the subject. You can click on individual stories for reading or sharing, as well as clearing them out of the “Trap”. By doing so, Trapit knows what type of content to focus on for you.

Since Trapit is doing all of the heavy lifting for you by way of searching for new items continually for all of your traps, an integration with Pinterest is absolutely perfect. Consider Trapit as the discovery engine for your pinboards. If you have a pinboard full of things that are orange, simply create a Trap for it and watch the content flow in. Once you find something, you’ll now be able to share it directly on Pinterest.

The reason why Trapit is now focusing on sending content to Pinterest is because the company noticed all of the inbound traffic it was getting from the site. Nothhaft told me that Pinterest easily sends them 5-6 times the traffic that Tumblr or StumbleUpon does. The company also had users asking them for the ability to easily pin content found on its site, so the feature was a no-brainer, plus the founders are already power users of the site.

If you’re a Pinterest Pro like the founders of Trapit and want to find a steady stream of cool things to share on Pinterest, then it’s worth giving the site a try. Even if you’re not a Pinterest user, finding really interesting things is made simple with Trapit, as they have sections of the site dedicated to featured Traps and hot content.

➤ Trapit

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, I truly believe that Google+ is the glue that will hold all of Google’s services together. We’ve already seen integration with its social network on Gmail, Docs and search, and it looks like the company is testing deeper integration on YouTube.

The integration that we’ve become accustomed to is the toolbar that shows up at the top of these services, which allow you to share something to Google+, go to your profile, and see your notifications.

If you don’t currently have a YouTube account and channel, you can see the integration just by logging into YouTube with your Google credentials. The familiar Google+ toolbar shows up at the top, which appears to be a test since everyone else is left without the toolbar:

It’s likely that Google is treading carefully with altering the popular video site which has a community that has been around long before any of its social efforts. This move makes absolute sense, and is just one step closer to weaving Google+ into a highly trafficked property. Currently, you can share videos from YouTube on Google+, but the experience is hidden under the “share” button, which also features Facebook and Twitter:

I suspect the +1 button to appear more prominently on YouTube over the next few months, which should increase numbers of Google+ users and provide the social network with more content than ever before. Since this integration is only being tested on Google users without a YouTube account, it could be a while before everyone starts to see it.

During the Innovation Convention last year in Brussels, a reporter “asked” former Google CEO Eric Schmidt a long-winded question that was more of his observation of how odd Google’s approach to culture is.

Chris Chabot, who works on developer relations for Google+, pointed out that this approach is what makes him proud to work for Google.

The end of the rambling question might actually be the most attractive part:

You tell employees to waste their time, 20% of the week, you have this strange management approach where people are treated like peers and you don’t mind failure.

This makes no sense what so ever

Eric Schmidt’s response?

It works for us.

Watch the part of the video below where Eric Schmidt discusses the company culture at Google, part of which was how Google had to make sure employees weren’t living at the office and had to have a bed elsewhere. Also, they had to wear clothes.

Culture is a big part of recruiting for Google, as it’s fighting to keeping engineers from leaving for Facebook and other companies in Silicon Valley. With social becoming the glue at Google, we’re wondering if this approach will strengthen over time, spawning new projects and features for its budding social network, thus keeping its employees around to see them through.

In case you haven’t heard, Yahoo! announced its new CEO today, Scott Thompson. Talk about walking into a storm of acquisition rumors and drama on your first day. Luckily, Thompson was formerly the President at PayPal, so he’s used to sticky situations.

The company says that Thompson will be tasked at focusing on its “core business”, but nobody knows exactly what that is, including Yahoo! What should their core business be? Mobile communities could be potentially lucrative and forward-looking to start.

If I were the new CEO at Yahoo!, I’d give the folks at Instagram a call and make them an offer on the spot.

Here’s why:

1. It could strengthen Flickr

Flickr isn’t “dead”, but it has become extremely stale. In an interesting post today, well-respected blogger and photographer Thomas Hawk wrote an open letter to Scott Thompson, asking him to save Flickr.

One of his best points was:

Flickr represents your *BEST* possible chance for social at Yahoo, but it’s probably too late.

I’m not so sure it’s too late if Yahoo! were to purchase Instagram and bundle it together as the web version of the popular photo sharing community. Not only are you getting a killer service that was Apple’s #1 app last year, you’re grabbing a team that is expanding impressively. With this team of giants, Flickr could be saved and put back on track. See, the Instagram team completely understands social, community, and comprehends how ripe the world of photography is for innovation.

What has happened at Flickr is sad, there are no voices guiding its community and the innovation on the site has come to a complete standstill. The community will eventually move elsewhere if it doesn’t start getting some TLC.

2. Mobile user acquisition

If one bought Instragram, 15 million users come with it. However, it’s not the quantity that makes sense for Yahoo!, it’s the quality of users it could acquire.
Instagram users are share-hungry, and by looking through the popular photos section of the app, it appears to have a strong hold on younger demographics. For example, Kylie Jenner (the youngest of the Kardashian bunch) has such a huge following on the app that it no longer displays her total number of followers:

Fans of people like Jenner and her Kardashian family would be a perfect fit for Yahoo! properties like omg!, which serves as its celebrity news and gossip hub:

While this is only one example of demographic and content matching that Yahoo! could take advantage of by buying Instagram, it’s quite a powerful thought. By working really hard on building out a mobile community, Yahoo! can sprinkle its supporting services in to create more of a well-rounded ecosystem of content-sharing social people. Plus, Flickr saw 78,895 photos from iPhone 4 cameras uploaded to the service yesterday alone, so there’s a strong opportunity to go bigger with mobile.

3. Cut the crap and do one thing really well

Let’s not kid ourselves, it’s very difficult to do a ton of things at once. Just ask Google about how long it has taken to glue all of its services together with Google+. It’s not impossible to stitch services like email and search together, but you must have a core competency that you can fall back on. I would say that having a strong mobile community would be a smart bet for that “one thing”.

While I have no idea if either side has any interest in working together, it would make a whole lot of sense for Yahoo! to double down on social and mobile, and those goals can be gained by acquiring Instagram. The fact that the company already owns Flickr, a once-successful photo sharing network that could benefit from such a deal, is just a cherry on top.

This year will be forever remembered as the year that we lost the most creative mind that Silicon Valley has ever seen, as well as one where a few rough Tech IPOs scared away potential future investors. We also said goodbye to some CEOs and tech founders, and Facebook stayed in the social networking driver’s seat.

Lets get into the year that was in Silicon Valley.

Steve Jobs

What can we say about Steve Jobs that hasn’t already been said? The founder and most memorable leader of Apple resigned as CEO in August, making way for the Tim Cook era. In his resignation letter, Jobs didn’t give an actual reason for leaving Apple, but suggested that Apple move on with its succession plan:

To the Apple Board of Directors and the Apple Community:

I have always said if there ever came a day when I could no longer meet my duties and expectations as Apple’s CEO, I would be the first to let you know. Unfortunately, that day has come.

Many assumed that the reason for Jobs stepping down was his failing health, and unfortunately that turned out to be the case when he passed away on October 6th. As a Silicon Valley icon, Steve Jobs brought Apple back to life, which launched the iPhone 4S and iPad 2 this year, showing that hard work and determination can indeed pay off. Even after his death, Jobs continued to make headlines, with his biography shattering records and topping charts.

Read all about Apple’s entire 2011 in our rewind.

IPOs

2011 was a big year for going public in the tech space. With much of the year being filled with rumblings about whether Facebook would go public or not, four other companies took the huge step of going for the IPO.

Here’s a timeline of big-name 2011 IPO filings:

• January: LinkedIn found a way to make money, so the time came to go public.
• February: Pandora went from nearly being toast, to becoming to the toast of tech.
• June: Groupon took the world by storm with its group buying model, but is the sizzle gone?
• July: Zynga relies heavily on Facebook for its revenue and game players, but that didn’t stop them from going for the IPO hailmary.

Unfortunately, most of these public offerings ended up tanking, but that shouldn’t stop companies from taking the leap next year.

Facebook and Yelp are the two companies to watch out for in IPO land next year.

Silicon Shuffles

A few major notable founders and CEOs left or were booted from their positions in 2011. Some of them included companies that were synonymous with “Web 2.0″, which was the beginning of the social web.

In March, Kevin Rose decided to resign from the company he started in 2004, Digg. After a short stint as CEO of the company in 2010, Rose decided to give the big goodbye to Digg this year. In many ways, Kevin Rose was a symbol of how cool it was to be an Internet entrepreneur, serving as a way more social and popular version of Mark Zuckerberg. His resignation came after an unsuccessful attempt to revive Digg’s community with a new version that everyone ended up hating. Don’t worry about Rose, he got funding for his new startup, Milk.

In September, Carol Bartz was fired as CEO of Yahoo!, over the phone no less. With Yahoo! seemingly having no leadership or direction, the rest of the year was filled with speculation on when Yahoo! would sell, and who it would sell to. Some of the names thrown around? Google, Microsoft, Aol, and Alibaba. No sale yet, and don’t hold your breath in 2012.

HP, which Steve Jobs had noted was “being dismembered, destroyed” fired its CEO this year, Leo Apotheker. However, Apotheker’s tenure didn’t even last a year and was replaced by former eBay CEO Meg Whitman.

But it wasn’t all about high profile departures, as Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey came back to the company in March to split time as an adviser as well as CEO of his Valley startup Square, putting 8 hour days in at both companies.

Facebook gets competition, remains king of social

The existence of a Google social network had been rumored for years, but this year we finally got to see what the company had come up with. In a huge direction change for the company, Google has decided to go all-in with social by launching Google+. In doing that, it shut down previous social failure Google Buzz.

Even though Google+ shows strong growth, Facebook remained the king of social in 2011. The company told us that they had 800 million users, but what was more impressive, it had 500 million users on the site at once.

Facebook didn’t stand pat amidst numerous privacy issues and launched numerous new features this year including Timeline. But what made Facebook the real king of Silicon Valley in 2011? The fact that it could bank 1 billion dollars in net revenue this year. Growth in users is one thing, features are another, but bringing in that type of bank puts it light-years ahead of Valley darlings like Twitter.

These are the stories that in one way or another narrated the entire year of innovation in 2011 on the left coast. What were your most memorable moments in Silicon Valley this year? Share them in the comments!

Zynga went public today as you might have heard, raising one billion dollars in its public offering. There are mixed reviews on how trading is playing out for Zynga at this point. Regardless, the company is basically printing money at this point and may have a certain number of users to thank for it.

In this fascinating (and somewhat scary) interview with Bloomberg, the developer of Mafia Wars, Roger Dickey, reveals that some users have spent thousands of dollars playing and upgrading their way through Zynga’s games.

Dickey says:

You have some players that spend thousands, even north of $10,000 a month on the game. I’m not sure where those people get that money.

During a Black Friday sale for Mafia Wars in 2009, some users spent $50,000 in one day. A piece:

People were wiring money to Zynga. Not even spending it through PayPal because they were going over the spending limits that PayPal even allowed.

Watch the full interview below:

Some sources have told us that Zynga doesn’t release a game that costs less than $75,000 to beat if you were to pay your way through it. While most Zynga players opt to play for free by pestering their Facebook friends for interactions that allow them to water things, having some players who spend thousands on these games certainly doesn’t hurt the company.

Maybe some of those users should buy stock in Zynga, since they can now.

Finding things to do in your own city isn’t always easy. Finding things to do on the cheap is next to impossible. Sure, if you Google something like “Free things to do in San Francisco”, you’ll probably find a bunch of a spam pages and perhaps a somewhat helpful blog post from 2009. You have to do all of the research to find out whether the prices listed or activities they wrote about are still available or not. It’s quite a pain.

RAVN sets out to make finding these activities an easy process, and a social one at that. The service that I found to be most similar to RAVN is Trazzler, but there are way more things to do listed in RAVN’s database, which makes it an attractive alternative.

Not only can you find free things to do in your area, you can get deals directly from event organizers and local tours, and even earn points to use towards these.

Right now, the service is only available in Chicago, Honolulu, Los Angeles, New York, Seattle, SF Bay Area, and Washington DC. Cities like Boston, Dallas, Houston, Las Vegas, and Philadelphia are on the way, the site promises.

Free, free, free!

The RAVN site itself is free of course, and as soon as you sign up with your Facebook account you’re shown a whole list of things in your area to mark off as being done or as things you want to do. This gives the service an idea of what types of activities to recommend to you, and even gives you points while doing it. As you tell the service each thing you’ve done and rate the activity, you’ll get points towards paid activities listed on the site.

RAVN does a brilliant job getting you into the spirit of what they’re trying to do, which is to get you excited about activities happening in your neck of the woods. By giving you points towards discounts on paid activities, that’s icing on the cake.

Once you’ve gotten tired of cycling through activities, you can skip ahead and find things that interest you, based on price, location, and availability. That’s a huge feature advantage for RAVN, because with our busy schedules, finding things to do isn’t always the problem, it’s finding the time that you can do them that is.

Activities on RAVN are categorized from things like “Date Ideas” to “Family Friendly”, so you’re more than likely going to find at least one new activity that fits your lifestyle. If you’d rather use an open search box for an activity, RAVN offers that option as well.

Get social

The social aspect of RAVN also makes for a fascinating experience. The service pushes up things that your friends on Facebook who use the service also want to do or have done. Who knew that Liz Gannes was interested in learning how to handle hot glass? Ouch.

RAVN’s search experience is pretty impressive, and makes finding the perfect experience rather simple. Based on availability and price, you can granurlarly find the best activity for you. I was able to find quite a few free San Francisco tours that I knew nothing about before trying the site.

The service is currently in private beta, but if you use the code TNW, you can jump the line. It’s a great way for local businesses to get on the local radar as a new hot spot. Something like a free tour of a chocolate factory could make for memories that you never thought you’d have before.

➤ RAVN

Back in October, Blogger started letting select users choose to display their Google+ profile with their blog, instead of the original boring Blogger profile. That feature has been made available to all Blogger users today, along with another handy new feature.

If you’ve connected Google+ with your Blogger profile, you will now have the option to automatically share each published post to Google+.

While it’s not the most exciting feature, it’s a step towards integrating Google’s social product into its most popular social product on the web before Google+, Blogger. The team promises more features in the coming months to join the two service experiences together.

The prompt will look something like this, allowing you to edit the snippet that gets posted to your Google+ circles:

If you’d like to go back and share all of your older posts, each of them will now have a share option that looks like this:

If you haven’t switched over to using your Google+ profile with Blogger, you can do that here.