The Backplane

The Backplane, Inc. was a US social-network-builder startup (founded 2011) that built branded social networks for fan groups and organizations, most notably Lady Gaga's Little Monsters community, and later pivoted to the Place.xyz network-building platform. Backed by Battery Ventures, GV, Sequoia, Greylock and others, it raised roughly $18.9M before running out of money, going out of business in April 2016 and selling all of its assets (patents, code, trademarks, URLs). The company is defunct; enrichment found no live website, developer portal, API, specification, or SDK surface to catalog.

The Backplane is profiled on the APIs.io network. Tagged areas include Company, Social Network, Fan Community, Defunct, and Battery Ventures Portfolio.

📡 Source on GitHub
0.0/100 minimal Agent 0/100 human only Full breakdown ↓
scored 2026-09-25 · rubric v0.23.0
0 APIs
CompanySocial NetworkFan CommunityDefunctBattery Ventures Portfolio

Kin Score

Kin Score Kin Score How this is scored →
scored 2026-09-25 · rubric v0.23.0
Composite quality — 0.0/100 · minimal
Contract Quality 0.0 / 21
Developer Ergonomics 0.0 / 17
Access Clarity 0.0 / 17
Operational Transparency 0.0 / 11
Contract Governance 0.0 / 10
Discoverability 0.0 / 9
Regulatory Posture 0.0 / 15
Agent readiness — 0/100 · human only
Machine-Readable Contract 0 / 18
Agentic Access Contract 0 / 10
Documented Reversibility 0 / 6
MCP Server 0 / 12
Machine-Readable Auth 0 / 10
Idempotency 0 / 9
Stable Error Semantics 0 / 8
Request/Response Examples 0 / 7
Rate-Limit Signaling 0 / 7
Typed Event Surface 0 / 6
Agent Skills 0 / 5
Well-Known Catalog 0 / 4
Consent & Bot Identity 0 / 3
A2A Agent Card 0 / 8
Dry-Run / Simulate Mode 0 / 4
Delegated User Identity 0 / 6
Protected Resource Metadata 0 / 5
Registration Without a Human 0 / 6
Agentic Commerce Well-Known Document 0 / 5
Regulatory Posture applies to this provider. Its tags matched the Horizontal (data, software, accessibility, platform) regime, so Regulatory Posture carries 15 points of the composite. If this regime is wrong for your business, say so on your provider repo — the applicability map is public and we will correct it.
Create-or-Update Ergonomics could not be measured. We hold no machine-readable contract for this provider to read, so there is nothing to measure a write surface against. Excluded rather than scored zero: never-measured and measured-empty are different facts. Publishing an OpenAPI is what makes this facet — and several others — scorable at all.
The six quality facets above are damped to 85 points between them, because the conditional facet above carries the other 15. That is why each facet's contribution is shown against a damped maximum: raising a quality facet moves the composite by 85% of its nominal weight, not 100%. The full arithmetic is at apis.io/rating/.
Improve this rating by publishing the missing artifacts — every area above can be raised, and the full rubric is at apis.io/rating/. Every facet and dimension name above is a link: it opens that measurement's own page — what it means, the exact checks that feed it, how the whole catalog distributes on it, and the providers at the top of it. This rating is computed from github.com/api-evangelist/the-backplane: open an issue to ask a question, or submit a pull request to add artifacts. Submit an artifact on GitHub — free → Manage your own listing — the Influence plan, $499/mo →

Source (apis.yml)

apis.yml Raw ↑ 
aid: the-backplane
deliveryModel:
  model: unknown
  open_source: false
  commercial: false
  callable_host: false
  label: Delivery model not determined — needs a product licence on record
  confidence: low
  source:
  - none
  generated: '2026-08-28'
  method: derived
accessModel:
  pricing: unknown
  onboarding: unknown
  trial: false
  try_now: false
  public: false
  label: Unknown
  confidence: low
  source: []
  generated: '2026-07-22'
  method: derived
image: https://kinlane-images.s3.amazonaws.com/shared/apis-json/icons/the-backplane.png
name: The Backplane
description: The Backplane, Inc. was a US social-network-builder startup (founded 2011) that built branded social networks
  for fan groups and organizations, most notably Lady Gaga's Little Monsters community, and later pivoted to the Place.xyz
  network-building platform. Backed by Battery Ventures, GV, Sequoia, Greylock and others, it raised roughly $18.9M before
  running out of money, going out of business in April 2016 and selling all of its assets (patents, code, trademarks, URLs).
  The company is defunct; enrichment found no live website, developer portal, API, specification, or SDK surface to catalog.
url: https://raw.githubusercontent.com/api-evangelist/the-backplane/refs/heads/main/apis.yml
x-type: company
x-source: vc-portfolio
x-backed-by:
- battery-ventures
x-tier: stub
x-tier-reason: portfolio-lead
x-status: defunct
x-status-note: Went out of business April 2016; assets sold. No live API surface.
specificationVersion: '0.23'
created: '2026-07-17'
modified: '2026-07-21'
tags:
- Company
- Social Network
- Fan Community
- Defunct
- Battery Ventures Portfolio
apis: []
maintainers:
- FN: Kin Lane
  email: kin@apievangelist.com
- FN: APIs.json
  email: info@apis.io
x-enrichment:
  date: '2026-07-21'
  status: nochange
  artifacts_added: 0
  pass: local-v1

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