You are working as PM of a social media app. You noticed that DAU of the app fell by 50%. How would you figure out what might have happned?

What does DAU exactly mean? à The users who log into/open the app daily and may or may not undertake any important action

Is this decrease seasonal? à No

Is this a sudden drop or has been happening over quite some time? à Gradual

Since it is a social media app, I am assuming that users themselves are creating content and user themselves are consuming those content. There may be other users such as businesses, celebrities providing content.

Okay, so I am going to try to evaluate the issue from different perspectives - metric measurement, technical, user action and external/competition. Eventually, I will also try to produce a few solutions.

Analysis for metric measurement perspective:

1. Has there been any change in the metric calculation?
2. Has there been any change in the tool used for metric capturing & calculation?
3. Is there a proportionate change in the weekly/monthly active users as well?
4. Is there a proportionate change in the content inventory levels? (Not enough new content available so users are no logging into the app)
5. Is there a proportionate change in the user engagement metrics (positive/negative) as well? (decreased engagement à decreased motivation for creators à users not logging into the app to create content)

Analysis from technical perspective:

1. Is the drop in DAU specific to any OS (iOS vs Android)?
2. Is the drop specific to any platform (web vs mobile)?
3. Is the drop specific to any software version of the social media application?
4. During the time window the DAU was dropping, were there any major backend feature or UI features upgrades done?
5. Are there any bug reports of the social media app crashing?
6. Are there any news of datacenters outage or server outage or network issues or load balancing issues?
7. Are there any other bug reports?

Analysis from user activity perspective:

1. Is the drop in DAU specific to any geography?
2. Is the drop in DAU specific to any user segment?
3. Are there any bug reports or social media chatter on people finding it difficult to engage with any content or create content or issue with any other feature?

Analysis from external/competition perspective:

1. Is there any new government policy/regulation restricting the use of all social media apps or any specific app?
2. Is there any new competitor in the market?
3. Is there any news of DAU increasing for any of the competitors?
4. Is there any news of better compensation to creators on other platforms?
5. Is there any news of war or extreme environmental situations?
6. Is there any negative sentiment about our social media app among the users?

Solutions:

1. If the drop is due to any technical issue (feature release/bug) à Analyze further and find the root cause and get the issue fixed as soon as possible. If required, rollback the affected release version. 
2. If the drop is due to some competitors à Devise short-term and long-term strategies to bring about product improvements to increase user engagement satisfaction and retain users.
3. If the drop is due to some environmental situation such as internet cables being hampered due to conflict at Red Sea à Get in touch with companies and governments who can mend the situation quickly
4. If the drop is due to better compensation to creators on other platforms à Check if economically it is profitable, if not don’t increase compensation as giving higher compensation will not be sustainable for competition as well. If yes, can consider increasing compensation by discussing with the finance team.
5. If there is negative sentiment floating around à Devise some strategies to increase trust and brand value by engaging with the PR team.