SAN ANTONIO — As Austin Mahone meandered through North Star Mall on Saturday, most of the thousands of shoppers milling around didn't realize that a self-made, global social media phenomenon was in their midst.

But Taylor Barrios, 13, knew.

Mahone and friend Robert Villanueva, both 15, passed her near the mall escalators. Her eyes widened. She nudged friend Dominique Villarreal, 14, and mouthed the words, "That's Austin Mahone!"

The boys made their way to the food court. The girls made their move.

"Can I take a picture?" Barrios asked Mahone.

He smiled and posed for pictures with each before he and Villanueva went on their way.

If you haven't heard of Mahone, you're old. If you have, you're either a teen girl or you spend time around them.

To hundreds of thousands of preteen and teen girls, singer and guitarist Mahone is the second coming of Justin Bieber. They scream when they see him and follow his every move on the Web, working their computer's "refresh" key to death.

Mahone embodies the teenage girl dream — with a disarming smile, short brown hair, bangs, braces and ear studs and typically clad in T-shirts and jeans and accessorized with sports hats or hoodies.

Since posting his first YouTube music videos in January, Mahone has become an Internet Elvis. Embracing the new business model perfected by superstar Bieber, Mahone has wielded his bedroom Mac like a hammer, using social networks to build his online following. And in doing so, he has created a buzz that previously took performers years to generate.

His YouTube video covering Justin Bieber's "Mistletoe" has 3.2 million views, more than Bieber's original video. A lip-syncing video he made with Villaneuva recently was ranked as the No. 2 comedy upload on YouTube — a site that gets 1 million new videos a day — within days.

Without a record deal or a single, Mahone debuted recently at No. 38 on Billboard's Social 50, a chart that combines Web presence and sales. Mahone ranked higher than Demi Lovato, 50 Cent and Jennifer Lopez and slightly lower than BeyoncÉ. He was the youngest person on the list.

"I'm overjoyed and excited and happy," said the soft-spoken Mahone, clad in a white T-shirt and khaki shorts. "I've always liked music, and this is something I've always wanted to do."

"I like the way he sounds," said Michael Morales, a Grammy-winning producer and a one-time chart-topping singer. "I think he does a lot of things that are very appealing. From what I've seen, he sits and plays. It's charming. He doesn't have a backing track or a karaoke thing."

Mahone's life has been divided between Seguin, San Antonio and La Vernia. His father died when he was 16 months old. An only child, he and his mother, Michele Mahone, moved to La Vernia when she remarried. That's where his nascent career began.

After experimenting with a YouTube comedy channel, he launched his music channel and began aggressively promoting it via social networks such as Twitter, Facebook, Ustream and Tumblr.

"I used everything I could and did anything I could to promote myself," he said.

People noticed.

By the end of January, he had attracted 2,000 YouTube fans. By February, he had 20,000 fans. In March, he was invited to perform at a Playlist.com live concert in Orlando.

Now he's got 247,000 YouTube fans and hundreds of thousands more on other networks. Even with that, Mahone says, there was no "big break." He spent hours in his room, active on the Web, interacting with as many fans as possible.

Whenever girls track him down in public, he's unfailingly polite and patient.

"They don't have much to say," he says. "They just ask to take pictures. They're very nice."

It hasn't all been good.

After his mom's second marriage ended, the family moved back to San Antonio. When he enrolled at Johnson High School, he was immediately recognized.

Girls fawned over him between classes, Michele Mahone said, and during lunch. Within weeks, it escalated. The school paper pulled him out of algebra for an interview. And then girls began taking candid pictures of him during class, even handing him phones to speak to their friends. Ultimately, some boys became resentful and began hassling him.

He withdrew from Johnson and now is home-schooled.

Mahone's meteoric rise has taken the family by surprise.

"It's gotten to the point where we realize that we're going to need to do a lot of planning," said Michele Mahone, who recently quit her job as a mortgage banker to manager Austin's career. "We've just hired an entertainment lawyer, and we're going to regroup and have a plan in place for 2012."

That's good, because being a YouTube sensation doesn't guarantee a successful career, says Corey Denis, vice president for Digital Marketing & Social Media at Los Angeles-based TAG Strategic.

"The road to a successful career arc is the same as it always was," Denis said. "A strategy has to be put in place treating him as a new artist, even if he has all of this attention already. He has to have something to sell to his fans."

Justin Bieber, says Alex White, whose company Next Big Sound calculates the Social 50, is one of the few Web sensations who has converted that social capital to a traditional music career.

Mahone is well on his way. He's got MP3s, shirts and other gear for sale.

Until recently, his career has consisted of being hired by parents to appear at birthday parties or make Skype calls to daughters.

But in October, he put out word at the last minute, on Facebook and Twitter, that he would be in Chicago's Millennium Park for an impromptu meet-and-greet. More than 1,000 screaming girls showed up.

The family approached Morales because he has a professional recording studio.

Mahone has positioned himself well, Morales says, but his next moves will be crucial.

"Anyone, even a music business veteran, would be lying if they told you where this was all leading," Morales said.

Information from: San Antonio Express-News, http://www.mysanantonio.com