Lady Gaga social network is for little monsters' eyes only

Move over Facebook, stand aside Google+: there's a new social juggernaut in town -- and it's snarling and holding aloft a bunch of bent fingers.

Lady Gaga, the poker-faced megastar with a penchant for meat dresses and a Twitter following the size of Florida, has launched her own social network, CNN reports.  

Called Littlemonsters, Gaga's pet name for her trillions of fans, the site has launched as an invite-only beta -- asking fans to submit their email to request an invite and "be among the first to experience a new community only for little monsters".

Bless. We expect Mark Zuckerberg has already signed up to try and get an early sniff at this potentially monstrous competition.  

CNN reckons MonsterVille looks likely to be designed in the style of online pinboard site Pinterest, allowing Gaga lovers to curate digital shrines of their heroine, show off these shrines to other Gaga worshippers, and vote for their favourite Gaga tributes, Gaga photos and Gaga videos, all in the company of fellow-ga-ga-about-Gaga-ites.  

The news was too much for one over-excited Gaga fan who tweeted: "i can't wait till all littlemonsters have a littlemonsters.com account!!"

According to CNN, LittleMonsters.com is the first project by Backplane -- the start-up founded by Gaga's manager Troy Carter and three other medium-sized monsters.

The first lady of pop is following in the footsteps of Harry Potter author JK Rowling-in-it, who set up Pottermore -- an online hearth and owl-filled home for people who are p-p-p-potty about Potter.

NB: Gaga's LittleMonsters.com is not to be confused with Littlemonster.com: the official website for Mercer Mayer's Little Critter books. And any attempts to call a Gaga fan a Little Critter is likely to result in serious amounts of snarling.

So can Lady Gaga crack that difficult social album? Should Zuckerberg be worried about lots of Little Monsters banding together to make one gigantic social beast? And will Twitter be left with a Gaga-shaped vacancy in its trending topics? Tell us your thoughts in the comments or put your paws all over our Facebook  page.