Spinning the Web.

• Author: MARRIOTT, MICHEL
• Position: Goosehead.com

Ashley Power, 15, stars onscreen and behind the scenes at her own successful Web site

At 15, Ashley Power is becoming a big star on the small screen--as in computer monitors--and it's all because of how she communicates her experiences and insights via the World Wide Web.

Power, who lives in Los Angeles, is the founder, chief executive, advice columnist, screenwriter, and sometime actress for Goosehead.com, which she launched two years ago. Her Web site features message boards about relationships, music, and politics; weekly chats with Power; digital games and music for downloading; free e-mail; and a homework helper with links to an online dictionary, a thesaurus, and language-translation services.

But Goosehead's breakout hit is Whatever, a sitcom, co-written by and co-starring Power, about teen life and its frustrations. Thanks to this attitude-laden Webcast, the site attracts more than 100,000 visitors a day. Now, Power is sometimes recognized on the street. "This stuff is so amazing to me," she says. "It has so blown my mind that I can't even comprehend it."

Whatever is co-written and directed by Power's stepfather, Mark Schilder, an artist and writer who has also shot television commercials. The show has attracted the attention of actor Richard Dreyfuss, who joined Goosehead.com as a partner last spring to help create more Web-based shows.

Part of what persuaded Dreyfuss was what he calls the "purity" of Power's teen-oriented vision. "Some people are trying to remember their past, or they are people trying to make money," says Dreyfuss of other sites trying to reach teens. "They're certainly not talking to their audience the way Ashley can connect with hers."

A MOUSE IN THE HAND

Like many people her age, Power practically grew up with a mouse in her hand. She has had a succession of Macintosh computers since she was 8, and she instinctively turned to the Web as a ready means of expression and communication. At 13, she began teaching herself from a book how to create Web-page computer files so she could work on her Web site.

With e-mail, she found fellow computer geeks, men sometimes three times her age, who eagerly helped her over snags with getting Goosehead off the ground and on the Web. (When Schilder learned that she had enlisted the help of men she had met on the Internet, he made sure their intentions were proper.)

Today, Power employs at least a half-dozen of her Web contacts as partners. One of them, Pat Galvin, 44, remembers...