Maybe you've heard of Lady GaGa; maybe you haven't. But it's likely that by the time summer ends, the singer's name will be on the lips of every tween and teen in the hemisphere.

As for the current reigning pop princess - that's Miley Cyrus, of course - her days on the throne may be numbered.

This information comes courtesy of the human crystal ball known as Tina Wells. The 29-year-old Erial, N.J., woman studies the most mercurial of constituencies - the youth market. Her company, Buzz Marketing Group, is hired by major corporations who want to know: What are they thinking?

Her super-specialty of studying the habits and preferences of the young started, fittingly, when she was 16. And since then, the accolades have kept coming: Billboard magazine's 30 Under 30 list, Essence magazine's 40 under 40 list, a cover story in O and another in Entrepreneur magazine.

Now, with nearly 14 years of observations under her belt, Wells is putting her take on youth into print. Not in a Power Point presentation, but in Mackenzie Blue - her first novel, released in May as part of a four-part series that documents the life of a fictional seventh grader and her prepubescent drama. There's even a TV series in the works.

The ingredients naturally came from Wells' accumulated field research (she has a network of 9,000-plus volunteer trend spotters in the United States and 20 other countries) and, eventually, input from moms, especially mothers of girls, who complained about the kinds of books their children were reading. Good role models were absent, and mean or stupid representations of girls were cultural icons, the mothers said. Wells wanted to introduce girls to somebody "spunky and interesting and real."

Enter Wells' character Zee, who's got smarts as well as an original spirit - but she also has the same anxieties as the typical tween. "I knew that I wanted Mackenzie to have the kind of swirling life of a modern kid, but not be a smooth blond goddess."

Wells sent a 50-page proposal to an agent in 2007, creating a character with red hair and freckles and plenty of worries, including how she'll get through the school year without her best friend who's moved away. When her diary entries make their way to the classroom whiteboard, the plot thickens.

Harper-Collins Children's Books bought the concept the day after Wells met with its executives. After completing her first book tour, Wells was delighted to find that tween boys took an interest in Zee's adventures as well. The reason, she suspects, is their quest to answer the mysteries of the teen girl. Apparently, it's a hot topic.

"It's been an amazing couple of years," says Wells, who also was named in October to the Philadelphia Orchestra board as its youngest member.

"I loved the writing process, but it's definitely time-consuming when you're juggling a million other things."

Of course, that seems standard for a woman who began her professional jet-setting career in high school.

A junior at Faith Christian School in Collingswood in 1996, Wells read an ad in Seventeen magazine that New Girl Times magazine was looking for a reviewer of products that might appeal to teenage girls. For Wells, it initially meant getting free stuff.

But she soon expanded on the assignment. Despite already being president of student council, editor of the yearbook, and on her way to being class valedictorian, Wells lined up several friends as "Buzz Spotters" to give her opinions more heft. Soon, she started her own company to review teen products. Back then, she called it "The Buzz."

She thought she wanted to be a fashion writer or editor, but realized in college that she was taking a different path. "This thing I already was doing had a name - market research," she said.

Inspired by Anita Jose, a teacher and mentor at Hood College in Frederick, Md., the communications major's independent study helped her refine and develop her own business plan.

By 2002, Wells had expanded her network of teenage Buzz Spotters more than 300-fold, thanks to a brief mention in CosmoGirl magazine about her concept of an online network of trend spotters. Before she graduated, she had finished her first assignment for Verizon Wireless. The Buzz became Buzz Marketing Group to reflect the company's mission.

Wells began studying teen opinions on issues ranging from drugs and music to sex, politics, and religion. Her reach also extended to the emerging tween market, loosely defined as children between the ages of 8 and 12. Eventually, her client roster came to include entertainment giants Columbia and Epic Records, fashion companies Esprit and American Eagle, and health and beauty industry leaders including MAC Cosmetics and Nivea.

After initially running the company from her parents' home, Wells headed for New York City in 2004. The next year, she was featured in O magazine in a story that highlighted five of the country's leading female entrepreneurs. She was, predictably, the youngest.

In 2006, Wells returned home to be near family, opening an office in Voorhees that is a unique blend of sassy and serious. Red walls in her private office are offset by what Wells calls "the world's largest Post-It note," a gigantic assemblage of youth trends and ideas. A lounge allows her staff of about 10 to kick back in front of a large-screen TV to catch the buzz of the moment.

But what happens in this South Jersey nerve center is anything but frivolous. Recently, Buzz Marketing was commissioned by the Girl Scouts of the USA to study self-image and self-esteem among the country's young females.

Now Wells plans to create an umbrella media company called Milk and Honey, with Buzz Marketing as a subsidiary, and to launch a new tween clothing line and possibly a product line tied to the Mackenzie books.

"Now I just have to learn how to get along with very little sleep," says Wells. "And that may just be the greatest challenge of all."