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Mary Lou Song is a community development consultant, advising Internet companies who want to build cooperative relationships with their consumers.Song was most recently director of community development for Friendster, a start up company focused on building social networks. Previous to Friendster, Song was senior product manager for eBay. As the company's third employee, she was instrumental in the development of the eBay online community. When she joined the company in 1996, eBay had approximately 15,000 community members; today it has more than 40 million around the world.In eBay's early days, Song built a cooperative relationship between the company and the user community, combining traditional product marketing with online community marketing. She was responsible for the strategic direction of community products, for the development and implementation of community tools, and for community initiatives that impact eBay's global community.Prior to eBay, Song worked as a journalist. She holds a bachelor's degree from the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University and a master's degree in Communications/Media Studies from Stanford University. | 