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How would you improve news sharing on Facebook?

Asked at Meta (Facebook)
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That is an interesting question to tackle. However before jumping onto answering the question, I would  like to share my understanding about the product and feature.

Describe the Product:

Facebook is one of the leading Social Media firm in this current era. The Mission of the firm is to empower its users with the power to stay connected  and make the world more open to thoughts. One  important way through which Fb attains this mission is by helping its users share what's new  in their life through the news feed section to people (people includes - public,friends, or selected few close people).

Clarifying Questions:

  1. Are we considering only the App version or web version? Mobile Version
  2. What Goal are we trying to achieve? Increased User Engagement espescially Creaters side
User Segmemt:
Since the topic of discussion involves on the sharing side, I'm going to consider only the Content Creators. By People I would like to consider all the users without Verified Ticks or simply put who are not a Public Figure.
  1. People who are Power Users in terms of Posting.
  2. People who are Normal Users in terms of Posting.
  3. People who Post very rarely.
  4. Public Figures who tries to update their fans with some new information through News Feed. 
Of these I would like to focus on people who are normal users and try to improvise it for them as they are a major chunk of users and I believe that addressing their issues, Will help people who post rarely as well.
Pain Points
  1. Gets anxious about the no. of likes/comments that their post will attract. 
  2. Gets confused in selecting a proper picture for posting and coming up with a good caption.
  3. Finding it difficult to tag people as user might not be aware of the Friend's username
Of thus, I would like to choose the first two pain points as without doing that no posts can be made.
 
Solutions:
  1. Facebook can combine a group of pics from a users mobile when the user has taken a series of photo with friends/ When they are in a trip. When user tries to create a post, this can be shown as "Facebook created album" as an suggestion. Facebook can uderstand that its user is in a trip when he gets tagged in multiple photos taken at a different location from the user's updated location.
  2. Facebook can enable an option to hide the number of likes received and comments by the user on their wish. This will remove the chance of comparison and thus in return helps reducing the anxiety.
  3. Facebook can use AI to analyse the pic to come up with caption suggestions and hashtags.
  4. Facebook can comeup with an button to beautify the pic by itself using AI depending on the background.
Of these I would like to judge the solutions based on the following criterias:
     - Reach - How many users will it affect
     - Impact - How much will it improve a user's issue
     - Confidence - How Confident I'm wrt this
     - Effort - Complexities involved in achieveing this
 
With these criterias in mind, I would like to choose the 1st and 2nd solution as both are easy to implement and has a huge reach and impact compared to others.
 
Trade Offs:
With the 1st solution, the trade off is that people might worry about privacy.
 
Success Metrics:
% of people turned off the likes and comments count
% of people increased their frequency of posting to before with 2nd solution implemented
# of people using the suggested album per 100 users who are shown suggestions 
 % of increase in new posts coming up per month compared to the same month previous year
  
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Lokesh

Solid answer – I’ll offer a few tweaks

Things you did well

1.       Frame – you clearly use a framework

2.       Describe the product – check

3.       Persona – you defined several persona

4.       Pick a persona based on criteria – you picked what you believe is the largest section of the user base.

5.       Pain points – you define a set of pain points

6.       Solutions – 3-4 solutions with one moonshot (self-beautifying pictures using AI is a cool moonshot). 

7.       Tadeoffs – you identified privacy

8.       Metrics – You defined a fine set of metrics

Areas of improvement

1.       Clarifying questions - in a real interview don’t be afraid to ask directional questions like what’s wrong with news sharing today?  Or what do they mean by sharing?  Maybe this question was all about sharing after someone else posts. 

2.       Pick a pain point using some criteria -   I would like you to pick one pain point.  Think about a well established product like FB – improvements are step by step.  You don’t need to boil the ocean in real life – don’t do it in an interview – make your life simple and pick one and explain why you picked it.

3.       Pick a solution using criteria – you told me that you were going to use rice – then you didn’t apply it.  I think its OK to use a modified rice RIE and please make a table with each rated high medium low.  Then make the comparison. 

Also like pain points – just pick one – don’t boil the ocean. 

4.       Summary – l’d like a quick summary at the end.

5.       Counter metric – are there any metrics you would look at for un intended consequences.  If I turn off like counts – while I track the number of posts I would also track the number of likes to see if the lack of visibility causes fewer interactions with the post. 

 

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