Mary Lou Song

Korean-American entrepreneur

Mary Lou Song is a Korean-American entrepreneur and was eBay's third employee. She joined the company, formerly AuctionWeb, in 1996 after being recruited by its founder Pierre Omidyar and Jeffrey Skoll.[1]

## Career

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Song graduated from Northwestern University's Medill School of Journalism with a B.S. in Journalism and from Stanford University with a M.A. in Media Studies.[2]

### eBay

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In his book "The Perfect Store: Inside eBay," Adam Cohen recounts the conversation between Song and Skoll, who she met at a Stanford Business School party. At the time, Song was working for a public relations firm, but agreed to have lunch with Skoll and Omidyar.[3] Song agreed to come on-board and was tasked with "bringing mainstream media attention" to the site.[4] Additionally, she managed the company's public relations and community and product management teams.[5] During the early days at eBay, Song is also credited with building the platform's community, tools and strategy to grow from 15,000 members to 20 million.[6]

#### Friendster

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Song joined Friendster, a social networking company, after a six year stint at eBay. She was brought on as the Director of Community Development with the responsibility of managing its user base.[7][8]

#### Tokoni

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Labeled as a story sharing platform, Tokoni was founded in 2007 by Song and her husband, Alex Kazim. The company closed its doors in 2010.[9]

## References

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1. ^ Gitlin, Martin (2011-01-01). eBay: The Company and Its Founder. ABDO Publishing Company. p. 34. ISBN 9781617840937. "mary lou song."
2. ^ "Mary Lou Song - Medill - Northwestern University". www.medill.northwestern.edu. Retrieved 2016-11-19.
3. ^ Cohen, Adam (2008-12-14). The Perfect Store: Inside eBay. Little, Brown. ISBN 9780316054645.
4. ^ Bissonnette, Zac (2016-03-15). The Great Beanie Baby Bubble: Mass Delusion and the Dark Side of Cute. Penguin Publishing Group. ISBN 9781591848004.
5. ^ "Wanderful Guest Speaker: Mary Lou Song | it's a Wanderful blog". wanderful.com. Retrieved 2016-11-19.
6. ^ "Mary Lou Song | The Huffington Post". www.huffingtonpost.com. Retrieved 2016-11-19.
7. ^ "MerchantCircle.com | Biographies - Advisors". www.merchantcircle.com. Retrieved 2016-11-19.
8. ^ "How to Kill a Great Idea!". Inc.com. 2016-06-01. Retrieved 2016-11-19.
9. ^ Kincaid, Jason. "Ex-eBay/Skype Execs Let You Share Stories With Tokoni". TechCrunch. Retrieved 2016-11-19.