You are the PM for Facebook Live. What are your priorities?

Facebook live? It gives ability to users to broadcast in the real time.

What is the goal of facebook ? Facebook relies on advertisement for revenue. If user engagement is high then the revenue will also be high because fb will get more chance to show ads to user.

Stage at which FB live is currently ? introduced few years back, people are aware about the feature and use it sporadically

Now we are looking to increase the usage of live ? Yes

Goal of FBlive -
1. Increase the adoption and retention within the fb platform

2. Increase the overall engagement of FB

My priority will be based on
1. How product is performing in the engagement and retention levels
a. I will keep track of the major metrics

b. I will be in close contact with customer to understand their pain points and behaviour.

2. Based on the insights from metrics and deeper diving through qualitative and quantitative analysis, I will build features or revamp the exisitng one

Structure: 

1. Clarify what the feature is (Assumed it's understood for the purpose of this write up)

2. Layout FB's overall mission

3. Brainstorm how Live can play a role in advancing that mission:

• Set strategic context and determine a north star metric to anchor to
• Understand key user groups 
• Define what does success means for each group and for the feature overall (identify key buckets of metrics to measure)
• Prioritize and discuss trade offs as we go 

• Content Creators: Personal Content, Ad Content, Live Events, Games 
• Content Consumers 

• User proactively searches for a Live Event: % of users that initiate search for Live Content, CTR for search results (segment both metrics by content type, demographic)
• User gets notified of a Live Event reactively: % of users that receive notifications about Live events (segment by content type, demographic)
• She responds to the notification (saves, sets reminder): % users that respond to notifications received (aggregate of actions, individual actions)
• She gets reminded of the event 
• Joins the Event: % of users that convert to attend Live events over a period of time (D,W,M)  

• User shares with friends that she is attending the event, invites others to join: % of Live Events Shared, Avg Number of Shared Events per user
• User starts to watch Live Video: Avg Watch Time per Video, % of Live Videos Watched, Avg Watch Time per User  
• She interacts with it while watching: emotions, comment: Weighted engagement score that measures the avg level of engagement a video gets, Weighted Engagement Score Per User which measures user's avg level of engagement per video
• She exits once done: Rate of abandonment before the video is over

• She awaits the next event, tracks her favorites: % of users that take follow up actions on recently watched content (following the page, liking, saving, posting about it) - explore the action/content type combination that correlates best with repeat engagement
• She explores new Live content: % of users that go on to engage with new Live content after their first view over time (perform cohort analysis with data science) 
• She re-engages: % of users that go on to watch another Live video within <2 weeks> of their first view

1. CLARIFY: 
   1. Do I need to focus on a specific channel? Assume no.
   2. Is there a particular market or user in mind for my focus? Assume no.
   3. Is there a particular goal you want me to focus on? Assume no / your choice.
   4. Am I assessing Facebook Live in its current state? Assume yes.
2. DESCRIBE THE PRODUCT: Facebook Live is part of the Facebook platform. It allows individuals, influencers and companies to livestream a video (conversation, performance, etc.). They can use their phone to go live. They can also host other people in their livestream to have conversations. Viewers can comment / like the stream in real time. Content creators can save their live clips and post them and even raise money for charity. 
3. GOAL: The goal of Facebook is to enhance social connections. Their FaceBook Live platform should help them with this goal, as it offers another means of social connection. From a business perspective, Facebook uses Facebook Live to drive revenue for the company through advertisements. For the sake of priorities, I'd like to focus on the revenue goal for Facebook; ultimately, growing engagement on the platform helps Facebook make money. 
4. USER GROUPS: There are two main groups using Facebook Live. 
   1. Content Creators: Anyone from an individual to a company creating / hosting livestreams.
   2. Viewers: Anyone watching the livestreamed content. They may engage with the content by commenting / liking.
5. SUB USER GROUPS: From a priorities perspective, I'd like to zoom into a specific user group to focus on. For this exercise, I'd like to focus on Content Creators, as they are creating the live content and we can drive engagement / revenue by enhancing this experience. There are 3 sub groups of users within the Content Creator space. For the sake of my priorities, I'd like to focus on one of these sub user groups to flesh out what my priorities are. I will focus on the Small Time Influencer, as they are very focused on trying to grow their social media influence and don't have the support of full teams.  
   1. Individual Creator: Individual, everyday users going live to mainly their friends. They do not have mass follows (ex. around 1K friends max). Content is more ad-hoc / unscripted. 
   2. Small Time Influencer: Upcoming influencer who is trying to grow their social media presence. They do not have a big following in the influencer space (think under 1M followers). Depending on the size of their following, they may be creating their own content. Content likely is more planned / potentially scripted. 
   3. Big Time Influencer / Company: Very popular influencer / company that has a huge brand following (ex. 1M+ followers). If the live is hosted by an influencer, there is likely a full team behind the production. 
6. PAIN POINTS: The Small Time Influencer has a number of pain points associated with Facebook Live. We can think of them across their journey to create content.
   1. SET UP: 
      1. Equipment: I don't know what equipment is best for my live shots (ex. lighting, camera, etc.)
   2. CREATION: 
      1. Best Content: I don't know how to create the best content (ex. I don't know how to film content well.). 
      2. Content that Sells: I don't know what content sells the most - i.e. brings in the most viewers.
   3. INSIGHTS:
      1. Best Time: I don't know what the best time to go live is to maximize audience. 
      2. Audience Insights: I don't know enough about my audience to create content that tailors to their needs / wants. 
   4. REVENUE:
      1. # of Followers: I don't know how to increase my number of followers. 
      2. Max Ad Revenue: I don't know how to maximize my revenue from Facebook Live advertisements.
7. PAIN POINT RANKING / PRIORITIZATION: To better understand my priorities as the PM, I'd like to rank the pain points of my selected user. 
   1. Overall, I'd focus on pain points that have high impact to users and low cost to Facebook. Based on the prioritization below, my focus would be on "Content that Sells" and "Max Ad Revenue". If I had to choose one, I'd focus on ad revenue, as it's the bread / butter of Facebook's business model to make money. 

   2. Theme	Painpoint	Impact to User	Cost to Facebook	Reasoning
      SET UP	Equipment	Low	Medium	- User: User can google equipment / check Youtube for information on equipment. Content creation is likely more important than equipment. - Facebook: Facebook would need to do research into equipment area. More of a stretch / may require third party partnerships in equipment space (given what it does now).
      CREATION	Best Content	High	High	- User: Creating the best content is of supreme importance to user. - Facebook: Helping users create content would likely require a bigger lift for Facebook. New area of business for them (as opposed to helping the distribution of it).
      CREATION	Content that Sells	High	Low	- User: User has high incentive to understand what content sells (ex. cooking video v. shop with me video).  - Facebook: Already has a lot of live streams already. Likely can analyze existing data to help with predictions.
      INSIGHTS	Best Time	Medium	Low	- User: User wants to maximize audience but knowing a time of day to livestream may not be top of mind most important. Will have to be based on their schedule, etc. and they likely have some idea of when to shoot. - Facebook: Already has a lot of live streams already. Likely can analyze existing data to help with predictions.
      INSIGHTS	Audience Insights	High	Medium	- User: User really needs to understand audience to know what content to create. - Facebook: Facebook already has data on who has watched but there may be extra work to understand if content A v. content B incentivizes more views for specific influencer types / audiences.
      REVENUE	# of Followers	High	Medium	- User: Number of followers is one of the most important metrics to influencers. Helps with brand partnerships, etc. - Facebook: Facebook needs to create solutions to help increase followers (similar to "Find Friends" but potentially for "Find Influencers, etc.)
      REVENUE	Max Ad Revenue	High	Low	- User: Many influencers are motivated to increase following because of revenue increases with increased viewers.  - Facebook: Facebook already runs ads / has a lot of material on how to run them / where to run them.

8. SOLUTIONS: Given the focus on Max Ad Revenue, I'd focus my priorities on coming up with solutions for that pain point. Suggested solutions are below.
   1. Ad x Video Analysis: Analyze the length of videos and suggest what is the optimal time to surface ads, # of ads, etc. based on the elgnth of videos. Could also analyze what is the optimal length of a live video to ensure max views/ max views of ads.
   2. Suggested Ads: Work with content creators to suggest ads for their specific audience (i.e. tailored ad content). "We see your audience enjoys online clothing shopping. We recommend this shopping ad during your livestream."
   3. Brand Connection: Connect users to brands that run advertisements on Facebook. Get brands to sponsor livestreams.
   4. User Incentives: Incentize users to watch ads during livestreams. If you watch X number of ads during a livestream, we will give you $5 to Facebook marketplace for example.
   5. Ad Customization: Allow users to customize what kind of ads they see during live. "What type of ads do you prefer? We see you've engaged with these type of ecommerce sites. Do these ads work for you?"
9. EVALUATE SOLUTIONS: 

   1. Solution	Impact to User	Cost
      Ad x Video Analysis	High	Low
      Suggested Ads	Medium	Low
      Brand Connection	High	High
      User Incentive	Medium	High
      Ad Customization	Low	Medium

      Given the evaluation, I would prioritize Ad x Video analysis insights for Content Creators. Working on this solution would allow users to maximize revenue on their channels and also grow Facebook's revenue as well - in line with its business goal. 

10. SUMMARY: As the Facebook Live PM, I'd focus on the Small Time Influencer group.  Based on the prioritization of their painpoints, my focus would be on "Content that Sells" and "Max Ad Revenue". If I had to choose one, I'd focus on ad revenue, as it's the bread / butter of Facebook's business model to make money. A potential solution to address this issue would be Ad x Video Analysis solution.

I will approach the question of "as the PM for FB live, what are my priorities?" by covering:

• Facebook Live: what it is
• The goals of Live and how it relates to the FB mission
• Users and a walk through of the customer journey
• Metrics in the context of the user journey
• Prorities for the FB product in the context of the above

First, before I continue I will ask a few clarifying questions:

Q: Is there a strategic mission you have in mind, or is it open for me to interpret based on what I know about the FB Inc mission?
A: I'll leave this open for you to decide, based on what you know. There is no additional context strategically. 

Q:  Is it fair to take the current lifecycle of FB Live is growth, having moved past the introduction phase but not yet at maturity?
A: That's a fair assumption to make, yes, Live has not reached maturity with its market. Let's talk in terms of being in a growth, but I wouldn't say the product is early in the growth phase though.

Q: Do you want me to take COVID and the recent market changes into account and answer as if making these choices right now?
A: I can see why you'd ask, yes let's take COVID and its effects into account and make this about what you would do right now with FB Live.    

Facebook Live - Setting the product context and highlighting what I know about the product

FB Live enables FB users to broadcast a conversation, performance, Q&A or virtual event to an audience. Live videos can appear on the Live page, other Pages, Groups, and on peoples' Newsfeeds. Content creators have access to a product called Live Producer - a set of broadcast management tools and insights. There are also a dozen or more partner applications that provide broadcasting solutions that can be linked to FB Live, highlighting the growth of a new broadcasting market segment across FB LIve and also YouTube. Some partner apps enable features such as inviting guests into the broadcast. An FB Live audience can send messages and reactions during a Live session. Creators can moderate comments automatically or manually. Creators can also raise money for a cause (which could be their own business). 

Missions - FB and the Live product

The mission of FB is to enable people to build communities and to bring people together. In addition, it is relevant to mention that the focus of the F8 2019 developer conference was on Privacy and "making communities as central as friends". Communites on Facebook are based on Groups and Pages which can be public or private. FB also announced a messaging-first approach in 2019. 

The live streaming market was reported in November 2019 to be worth $180 billion globally. 

Users can be broadly put into two types; creators and audiences: 

1. Content creators
   1. Influencers broadcasting Live public classes to reach and grow their audience
   2. Businesses broadcasting to a private group
   3. Musicians broadcasting a performance (or other stage performers)
   4. Gamers broadcasting a gaming session
   5. Local or global news organisations
       
2. Audiences
   1. Friends who want to watch content together based on an interest 
   2. Communities e.g. for gaming
   3. Family who watch content together (maybe as a private group)
   4. Couples who want to watch content together who may not be together in the same place (again, privately)
   5. Fans (music, theatre, film?)  
   6. Followers (of creators/influencers) 

If I had access to the data, I would review which type of content is growing in popularity and in the number of people / orgs creating that type of content. By comparison I would also look at the content that is underperforming against expectations or against market assumptions. Such as the popularity of a content type of YoutTube or Twitch for example. 

Prioritised Users: Gaming Streamers & Gaming Communities

Global revenue for e-sports is far greater than music and film. Audiences are larger and the barrier to entry for streamers is arguably far lower in terms of equipment and the ability to generate basic content. For these reasons, I feel that focusing on the growth of gaming for Live presents the most opportunity. 

The most obvious strategy for growth in game streaming means attracting audiences and creators from other platforms that are not owned by FB. In terms of Live streaming games and e-sports, this means YT (Google) and in particular Twitch (Amazon). Twitch is still a market leader is e-sports and game streaming with an estimated 15M DAU (daily active users) compared to Facebooks estimated ~700M MAU (monthly active users). 

Advertising and sponsorship revenue follows an audience, but audiences can be loyal to platforms like Twitch. Getting the rights to major e-sports events won't make FB the market leader overnight. 

> I want to focus on the user experience for the players who are streaming, and also for the gaming communities. The community element fits well with the FB mission. 

Thinking about the others I have not chosen from the user list... FB is the largest social media platform in the world, Instagram is also high on that same list. FB Inc also owns two of the worlds biggest chat apps: Whatsapp and Messenger. There is already a big audience for influencers on instagram (stories and TV) in many categories like fitness. I don't want to do anything hastily that might cannablise that business, instead I would want to grow the gaming audience that is currently underserved on those platforms. Regarding Live News, there are a number of established News orgs on FB Live already, and more could be brought on board through business partnerships. Not a growth area compared to gaming. 

User Journeys: 

Gaming Streamer (assuming user is already on FB) engaging and growing a community

1. Starting out as a streamer:
   1. Create a page
   2. Setup streaming and monetisation (through FB)
   3. Start (by making a post and starting to stream)
       
2. Streaming and building community
   1. Share streams in relevant community page or group (including your own page)
   2. Engage with the community during a streaming session
   3. Engage with the community group / page after a streaming session 

 

Gamer looking to join a gaming communities (assuming user is already on FB)

1. Search for a page or group
2. Join group or page
3. Watch a live gaming stream 
   1. optional: donate stars (generating additional revenue for the streamer and FB)
4. Enagage with the community while watching (posting comments and reactions)
5. Engage with the community after an event (in a page or group, commenting on posts etc)

Two places where streamers engage directly with their viewers can be seen in the highlighted journey stages above: during a streaming session and after a session, by messaging within a group or page such as the streamers own page. This insight puts messaging at the centre of growth for gaming given that the user journey for signing up and streaming is lean and effective already.  

Possible priorities:

• Messaging quality / safety
• Streaming quality
• Donations and sponsorship
   

CHOSEN STRATEGIC PRIORITY FOR FB LIVE: 

>>> Enable the best online communities for gaming by ensuring the quality & safety of messaging as the basis for building engaged communities

On Twitch and other platforms, people can be anonymous which makes it more likely for bad actors and 'trolls' to hide and continue reducing the quality and safety of streamers and community members. The chosen priority builds on FB profiles being real people and the advances in AI research and technology to identify and take action on harmful content, bullying and bad actors.

Put simply: if the community and streamers feel safe to express themselves, without fear of trolls and other negative or harmful behaviour, they will be more engaged. This will create authentic growth that will be harder for other platforms with anonymised users to compete against, provding a decent 'moat' for FB Live. 
 

Potential Metrics to Prioritise Features in FB Live

• Streamers

  • Daily Active "Pro" streamers (where pro is defined as a 'leveled up' user with avg 1k+ views per stream) 
  • New streamer signups (weekly and monthly)
  • Top 10 growing streamer pages (weekly, monthly)
• Platform
  • Total Daily Active Streamers (all)
  • Total Daily Active Pro Streamers
  • Concurrent Streamers
• Audience
  • Daily Active Viewers
  • Concurrent Viewers
• Community Quality (scores here would be created with the help of data science and community SMEs. Scores could be used to index pages against community segments)
  • Community sentiment: a score indicating the overal positve/negative balance in the community. Where community refers to a group that could be segmented by the game, genre, pages, groups, or streamers. Communities are expected to be overlapping, so segmenation would help to highlight where the postive and negative sentiments are most pervasive.
  • Streamer engagement: a score given to each (pro) streamer to indicate how engaged they are in various communities. Scores could be weighted by factors such as number of games, # of communities involved in, the strength of positive sentiment that people express towards them. The score should aim to enumerate the effect the streamer has on gamer communities closely associated with FB Live, such as those who follow the streamers page. 
  • Page Quality Score:  quantifies the overal quality and safety with other features in the data, such as threaded reply length, comments per post, audience diversity, and growth rate potentially.  
  • Group Quality Score: same as page quality score. Would not be reasonable to compare directly to a page score, given the different use and functionality of the Pages and Groups. 

I have prioritised three primary metrics ( highighted light-orange ) to provide an overview of FB Live performance in the context of the strategic priority stated earlier.  Secondary metrics ( highlighted in blue ) give detail and context that will help to guide new and existing features towards improving the quality and safety of the gaming communities. Doing so will lay the foundation for increased growth for Live game streaming.  

You are the PM for Facebook Live, what are your priorities?

Interviewee: I want to make sure that my understanding of Facebook Live is correct. Facebook Live is a product for users to go live, and connect directly with their fans or followers and interact with them in real-time. Users can connect at a different level. 

Interviewer: Yes, that sounds good

Interviewee: Does the scope include 'Live Videos' or is it limited to the feature for a user to go 'Live'?

Interviewee: How long has it been Facebook Live? Would you consider it as an early stage or late stage product?

Interviewer: It's relatively a new product

Interviewee: Do we know of any existing challenges with this product?

Interviewer: No

Interviewee: Ok, thank you. I need a few minutes to organize my thoughts and then will discuss them with you

Interviewee:

 

Product goals:

a) Seamless way to interact with users in real-time, connect at a different level, share content or an experience in live-time

 

User personas:

a) Enaged content creators: These are users or businesses who want to broadcast information or content with other people in real-time. They want to be able to instantly broadcast their experience (enhance them with filters) to users and interact with them in real-time via comments etc.

b) Passive content consumers: These are users who create less content and consume content that is relevant to them. They should easily discover content relevant to them and in a timely manner so that they can engage with it and benefit from it. This also gives encouragement to content creators

 

Business goal: Overall business goal would be engagement with this feature as well as giving the right set of tools to content creators to produce more live-videos

 

Metrics: 

Primary Metrics:

 

Adoption:

# of DAUs who have used Live

# of DAUs who have participated in watching a Live video or sent comments

# Live-videos per user or a business segment

 

Engagement:

# of comments per live-video

# of users who have watched a live-video

# of likes or reactions per live-video

# of users/ Live-video when a video is live

# of users who view a Live-video post being live

# of comments/Live-video when a video is live

 

Other metrics:

Filters used by live-video creators?

How many videos are saved after going live?

Which channel are they saved to?

Which features - captions, emoticons etc. are being used by live-video creators?

 

Summary: I would prioritize engagement features for content creators and hence prioritze # of live-videos created and the tools to support content creators measured via filters, captioning tools, emoticons. In addition to this, I would also prioritize engagement features for content consumers measured via views, likes, comments on a live-video, # of users who engage with a video

1. What does this product do? (value proposition) and how does ths product do for its users? (features)

2. Who are the users does this product focus? in a specific market? specific device?

3. What is the goal we are looking for here? I do not know yet but let's list out some of the metrics to analyze, then we can see what priority should I focus on.

4. User journey (check in with the interviewer to see if i miss anything)

- user who does live stream

1) people sign up FB/people login to FB (# of sign ups, # of MAU on FB)

2) people go click FB live (# of clicks on FB live button)

3) people live stream on FB live (# of live stream per account per week, length of live stream per account per week)

4) people receive likes/comments (# of likes, # of comments per account per week)

5) people exit live stream (# of opt out)

6) live stream saved somewhere? (storage space per user account?)

- user who view live stream

1) sign up/login to FB (# of sign ups, # of MAU of FB)

2) receive notification of friend's live stream (notification click through rate - clicks/impressions)

3) newsfeed of facebooker live stream (news feed CTR)

4) ignore live stream

5) go in comment/like live stream (# of likes/comments per user per week generated)

6) exit (opt out rate)

5. Analysis and prioritization

aquisition: people who sign up/login to FB may not go to live stream

engagement: people who interact with FB may ignore live stream or do not do live stream

retention: people who use live stream a bit may opt out the product

monetization: not clear

Then I will need to check on data for each of the metrics in the user journey. what did the data say from these metrics, then we prioritize it.

The first step in answering this Facebook product strategy question is to break it down further and try to clarify individual parts:

• What does FB live solve today?

  • Let's assume that facebook live allows it's users to connect with their connections in 1 to many ways. It allows this by realtime audio/visual/textual communication.

  • Users want to connect in this way generally to "broadcast themselves".

  • Intended use can also be geared towards seminars, webinars and other group activities.

• Business goals for facebook live?

  • User engagement & retention

  • User acquisition (as content creators enable potential users to discover the app through some surface-discovery funnel)

  • User delight that enforces brand awareness and brand loyalty

  • Support power users - enable business users to reach their user base in an organic way

• How do these goals align with the company's mission?

  • Fits perfectly with "bringing people together" - FB live provides an interface for people who have common interests to be able to connect with each other.

  • "create tools to build community" - Live is a great tool to have video interactions with topics a group of people may care about.

Let's look at the user segments here:

• Consumers - folks who are invited to join a call (either by the caller or via facebook notification that tells them their friends are going live).

• Live goers :) - the users that actually broadcast or start a live call. These are the set of users who are taking the initiative and have an intention, topic or agenda in mind to communicate.

For each of these users, the features and solutions will differ. The priorities for the product will have to come from the alignment of business goals and the user needs. Some questions to hold:

• What user actions will enable better results for the business goals? Northstar metrics

• Which user segment creates more value? Tracking metrics

• How do we enable a virtuous cycle between the users? Because doing so will create a feedback loop. Engagement metrics

The live goers are the set of users that will help drive traffic into the product. Their actions and frequency will define success to a great extent. Engaging, enabling and growing this user base is key to success. The consumers do have an important part to play as well. They will need to engage. If they don't engage frequently or act passive throughout the call, chances are, the content is either boring or they don't resonate with it. This will result in lower engagement rate & possibly the association of the product to a negative experience. Let's put a few metrics to make sure the above user segments can be tracked:

Metrics	What does it tell me about where to focus?	Priority
# of FB DAU that share new content with their connections.	This gives a baseline set of potential "live goer" users I would want to see using the FB Live.	5
# of the users from the above group that start a FB live call/week	This gives a baseline of all users currently aware of the FB live feature. If this # is low (compared to the one above), we should focus on user awareness.	1
# of users joining FB live calls/week and engage in one of the ways available to them: likes, reactions, comments etc.	Gives us a sense of the engagement of consumer users. Also tells us if some call is more engaging than others	4
# of users that start a live call but abruptly stop it (within a few minutes) and never initiate again	Control group that we should focus on to see what went wrong?	3
# of the user that joins a Live call but exit the call abruptly.	Gives us a place to find out how can we make the product more sticky for these users? (assuming they don’t exit a call due to external circumstances).	2
# of users that have a tendency to hop from call to call.	These users know how to use the product but maybe can’t find the right content. How do we keep them engaged or get them to recommendations that will enable engagement behaviours?	6

 

The priority above optimizes for growth. Both user and product growth. 

Vertical alignment: I would also look for the opportunities of vertical alignment on the value chain because facebook is already doing it well horizontally. A couple of ideas to consider here will be (1) FB Live integration with the connections on all FB platform - sending notifications & call to action for users across Instagram and Facebook for instance. This shall enable tighter integration and foster stronger engagement with a larger group. (2) Recommendations to jump on a live call based on user activity and known events. For instance, recommending a user to start a FB live call if they just reached a major milestone in their life and posted an updated based on it. This will naturally enable users to jump into a “broadcast yourself” mode and may create a net positive experience.

Again these ideas will be depended on some hypothesis and surely some A/B testing to validate if this should be the path forward.

So in summary, my priorities for FB live will ride on the product alignment with the business & user goals. I can measure those based on some of the metrics mentioned above to look for ways to find growth paths. Strategically, vertical alignment with other products within the FB ecosystem may also support the overall business goals and hence a good start for an A/B testing. There will certainly be tradeoffs that we will have to consider. For instance, a wrong recommendation for a user to broadcast their activity may result in low