You are part of Reddit Product Management team. How would you measure the success of Reddit?

Reddit metrics PM interview question: How would you measure the success of REDDIT?

What is Reddit?

Reddit is a link sharing, discussion, and community-building platform.

The main features of Reddit are:

“Posts”, which can only be submitted by users with a Reddit account. Posts have a comments section where other users can discuss the post. Posts are voted “up” and “down” by Redditors.

The up/down voting feature which allows Redditors to vote up and down on posts. This feature is what defines Reddit and sets it apart from traditional forums.

Subreddits are categories and every post is placed into a single subreddit. Redditors subscribe to subreddits that interest, allowing them to follow specific types of content more closely.

The front page is where the majority of Redditors spend their time-consuming content

Karma is a metric given to Redditors that represent their contributions to Reddit. Each Redditor has "link karma" and "comment karma". Link karma is the total difference between all upvotes and downvotes on every link post the Redditor has ever submitted.

Inbox: Every Redditor has an "inbox" which contains a record of comments, private messages, and mod mail (private message from a moderator).

What is the goal of Reddit?

Let’s assume that the goal of Reddit is:

To provide a social space where content creation and publications are made easy

To let Redditors frequently give their opinion themselves by votes up and down

To Generate revenue on advertisements

Then, we will make an emphasize on acquisition, retention and revenue.

Let’s visit the User journey:

Acquisition: for activation, let’s focus on some key metrics

# of new visitors / day & week;

Main acquisition channels ;

Main subreddits concerned about new visitors;

Activation:

# of sign-ins per week

# of downloads of the app per week

Growth of App downloads WoW

Growth of sign-ins WoW, MoM

Engagement:

Mean time before a first comment/user

Mean time before a first vote/user

Number of new users who write a post

# of the new sign-ups account who write a post before a week

# of votes/user, before a first post

Retention:

Growth of votes / user / week

Growth of # of comments / user / week

% posts / Comments per user

% user signed / active users

Growth of subreddits MoM followed by an Active user

Growth of users who write posts on the app

Mean time spent on the application / active users/week

Revenue:

Let’s assume that the revenue strongly depends on the retention because it’s based on advertisement on every subreddit. So the main metrics we are going to focus on are :

Number of subreddits created;

Number of active users per subreddit;

Summary

Based on the objective of the application which is to increase retention and revenue, we will focus on some metrics:

Growth of votes & comments / user / week

% user signed / active users

Mean time spent on the application / active users/week

Number of subreddits created;

Number of active users per subreddit;

first, I will give a quick brief about the product, and the business goal, map through the customer journey and evaluate the success metrics to achieve the defined goal and prioritize them and finally summarize the overall answer. 

Let's start with Product

About Reddit: Reddit is a social news aggregation, web content rating, and discussion platform where registered members submit content to the on the platform such as links, text posts, and images, videos, which are then voted up or down by other members.

There are approximately 330 million Reddit users, called "Redditors"

Subreddit:  Reddit is broken up in million of communities known as "subreddits" each of which covers a variety of topics like news, science, movies, video games, music, books, fitness, food, and image-sharing. 

There are more than 138,000 active communities  

Front Page: The front page is Reddit home page that shows various posts that are currently trending on the basis of upvotes. 

Karma:  Users can also earn "karma" for their posts and comments, which reflects the user's standing within the community and their contributions to Reddit. 

Goal: There are approximately 330 million Reddit users(Redditors), and more than 138,000 active communities(subreddits).  assuming that the product is in the mature stage so the goal should be 

1. Engagement
2. Retention
3. Monetization/Increase profitability (Major or High-Level Goal) 

User Group

1. Users (Redditors)
2. Moderators: Subreddits are overseen by moderators, Reddit users who earn the title by creating a subreddit or being promoted by a current moderator. These moderators are volunteers who manage their communities, set and enforce community-specific rules, remove posts and comments that violate these rules, and generally work to keep discussions in their subreddit on topic. 

 User Journey

• The user creates an account on the Reddit platform and becomes Redditor. 
•  Users join or subscribe to any subreddit by their choice. 
• user comments, upvotes/down votes to the subreddit posts, links. 
• user can also create their own subreddit on a topic of their choosing.
• users earn karma on their commenting and upvotes/downvotes. 
• by active participation on any subreddit users can become "moderators"  being promoted by a current moderator.

 Now I would like to evaluate the key metrics keeping the goals in mind.

Acquisition

• # of new registration done on the Reddit platform per day/per week/per month.
• # of new Reddit app downloads for both Andriod and iOS per day/per week/ per month
• % of the growth of sign-ups over a period of time i.e WoW, MoM, etc. 
• % of the growth of app downloads over a period of time i.e WoW, MoM, etc. 
• # of user dropoff after downloading and login to the app and website respectively.

 Activation

• # of Users join subreddit after sign up the Reddit platform in 7 days, 30 days. 
• # of users post, comment, upvote/downvote for the first time after sign up in 7 days. 30 days.
• # of subreddit created by the new user after signup in 7 days. 30 days.    

Engagement

User 

• # of the user that post/comment/upvote/downvote in per day/per week/per month.
• # of average posts on which a user comment/upvote/downvote in per day/per week/ per month 
• # of content/link/image/videos a user post in per day/per week /per month
• Average session duration or time spent on the Reddit platform.
• DAU, MAU

 Moderators:

• # of content/link/image/videos/posts a moderator, moderate in per day/per week/per month
• # of AMA(Ask me anything) session arranged by a moderator in a per week/per month
• # of Redditors are promoted by a moderator after analyzing the active participation of any Redditor    

 Apart from that some of the Engagement matrics 

• # of subreddits updated in per day/ per week/ per month
• # of subreddits are not updated (cold subreddits) in per day/ per week/ per month 

Retention

• How often or # of times Redditors return in per day per/ per week/ per month 
• How often or # of times moderators return in per day/ per week/per month
• % of users drop off over a period on time. i.e WoW, MoM
• Retention rate over daily, weekly, and monthly.

 Monetization

• # of Impressions over ads
• #of clicks measured on ads
• % growth on CTR and Ad impression over a period of time Daily, WoW, MoM
• # of active users opt Reddit premium(ad-free) services per day/ per week/ per month. 
• % growth of Reddit premium over a period of time daily, Wow, MoM.
• # of Reddit premium users vs. # of non-premium Reddit user (% in 1 month)      

 Prioritize

Based on the defined goal I choose the following metrics

• # of the user that post/comment/upvote/downvote in per day/per week/per month.
• # of average posts on which a user comment/upvote/downvote in per day/per week/ per month 
• # of content/link/image/videos a user post in per day/per week /per month
• Average session duration or time spent on the Reddit platform.
• # of AMA(Ask me anything) session arranged by a moderator in a per week/per month
• How often or # of times Redditors return in per day per/ per week/ per month
• % of users drop off over a period on time. i.e WoW, MoM
• % growth on CTR and Ad impression over a period of time Daily, WoW, MoM
• # of active users opt Reddit premium(ad-free) services per day/ per week/ per month. 
• % growth of Reddit premium over a period of time daily, Wow, MoM.

 All the prioritized metrics are quite relevant to the current stage of the product stage and aligned with the primary goal of the product. at this stage, we can focus on some secondary metrics like the health of the product and what content items have that are most Upvoted/Commented, etc 

What is in the item? 

amount of text

video

image

links