By Sara Ballenger

Photo by Monique Schoenfeld, Town Crier

Webmaster survives AOL shutdown to establish online magazines

She stands only 5 feet tall, but she has done battle with giant America Online.

Between her Spanish II, Algebra and World History classes, 15-year-old Los Altos resident Elizabeth Hill runs her Web site, www.mabet.com. The sophomore at Homestead High School publishes and writes eight free teen magazines on her site and hosts chats, e-mail, and other features. She said she gets a total of about 3 million “unique hits” - people visiting per day.

The name for her site came from a family nickname.

“When I was born, my older brother couldn’t say my name. So he just called me Mabet,” Hill said. “It stuck ever since.”

Hill first moved to Los Altos from San Diego with her family three years ago. “When I was in school, I felt so lonely. I would come home and get on the Internet as a way to talk to my friends in San Diego,” she said. “I subscribed to a magazine that was run by older people. I just couldn’t relate to any of the advice or information they had. They made it sound like you’re 5 years old and they’re your mom or your dad,” she said.

Two years ago, she and her friends decided to start an e-mail newsletter, “A Teen’s World,” that Hill felt was more relevant to her age group.

“I thought it would be better to look at it from ‘I’m 15, you’re 15, we can relate really well.’”

Hill and her friends discussed issues and swapped advice on a weekly basis in their newsletter. Hill wanted to make all of the content in her newsletter unique. It seems people noticed. Before long, other people outside her circle of friends wanted to join Hill’s newsletter.

“I don’t know what happened because I had no publicity, I didn’t go around the Internet telling people I had an e-mail newsletter,” she said. “It became actual magazine content, instead of discussions. It became articles and pictures and things like that.”

Hill and her friends gathered a lot of their own material in the beginning stages. “My friends and subscribers wanted to contribute things. It got too big,” she said.

In fact, it got so big AOL had to shut her down, she said.

“They (AOL) weren’t that supportive,” Hill said. “Technically, when you send out more than a 1,000 e-mails, they call it spam.” Spam is a term used to define mass junk e-mailings.

“They gave me a warning when it (her subscriber list) was at 30,000, but I kept sending,” Hill said.

Eventually, when she tried to send e-mail from the e-mail address specific to the newsletter, she would be logged off.

“It’s very interesting. They monitor what you do on every computer,” Hill said.

She called AOL to ask why the company wanted to close her newsletter down.

“They said ‘Ma’am, you are sending out 87,000 e-mails a month and we can’t handle it.’ Then they had downloads and times when I sent them and everything,” Hill said. “So somebody monitors your specific account,” she said. “If you have offended, too; if you’ve been warned already, they monitor you.” Hill was on AOL’s list as an offender.

“I had to close it. I was overflowing their memory banks,” she said.

So Hill decided to change her subscription magazine to a Web site. “I sent out an e-mail that had the address Mabet.com, and it had the same heading I have always had, so people knew it was the same magazine,” she said.

The Web site has been going now for almost three months and has been growing. “The magazines are for different genders, interests, and ages, and all kinds of things,” she said.

Hill hopes to be in the top 10 of Web sites for teens by logging 1 million “unique hits” by 2002.

“I am kind of like Yahoo right now. I am equipped with a search engine, free e-mail and a community,” Hill said.

It seems that the effects of Mabet.com are being felt outside of cyberspace. Hill has been asked to speak at conferences for the American Association of University Women, and was asked to attend workshops on business and sales by leading computer companies.

“I just came back from business in L.A.,” she said. “Now I have to catch up.” Hill said of her school work. “It’s amazing how it’s grown in such a short time.”

The irony now is that the once-obstructionist AOL now wants to advertise on Mabet.com, according to her mother, Aiko.

Aiko said she’s “very proud” of her daughter’s accomplishment. She said she has given her daughter encouragement but let her run the business on her own.

“She did it all by herself,” Aiko Hill said. “She’s a very independent person.”

To view the Web site, logon to: www.Mabet.com.