You’re the PM for a social media company. You are owning a new feature that allows video sharing (like YouTube ). What would you pick as your success metric?

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You’re the PM for a social media company. You are owning a new feature that allows video sharing (like YouTube ). What would you pick as your success metric?

Asked at Other over a year ago

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Vishal Shah · Answer 1 · 2021-06-25T03:54:19+0000

To better understand this, I think it would be helpful to understand first about this social media company and what the intent is of the social media. Like what's this social media about?

Interviewer: It's a social media where people connect, share videos (no pictures).

Me: Is this a new company? (yes)

Me: Is it fair to assume that this is a startup ? (yes)

Me: So are tehse Youtube videos that are posted or people taking their own videos like selfie videos or takng video of funny things and then posting? (both)

Me: What else can you do other than sharing the videos? (People can comment but only emoticon based comments.)

Me: ok considering this is a new company is it fair to assume that the company is likely still focsued on acquiring more customers? (sure we can assume that)

Me: How does this company make money? (there might be advertising videos and then there are some ad banners on the top).

Me: ok to me ad banners on the top seems like a major deterrioration of user experience but that's aside the point. So this is digital advertising just like most other social medias (except LinkedIn). (yes)

Me: ok so let's focus on customer acquistion as primary north start but I think secondary metric we should also be evaluating is adoption / conversion. I mean, customer comes first but then do they buy in to the idea of using our portal consistently? Is that align with your thoughts? (sure). However, due to time constraints, let;s focus on just acquisition if that's ok (yeah thats fine).

Me: ok so what I would wnt to think about is how to evaluate if we are getting appropriate level of customer acqusition so that I can know if I am on the right track or something massively needs a change.

So couple things I woudl measuer would be:

1) # of net new customers acquired within a week (week assuming this product is for young people since they tend to have daily activities. I alos think that this social media could be the fad thing if it's great and so in a week I can get enough data)

2) % of total videos shared / week (I wouldn't rely on AVg. since avg. is consider outliers and that's not a good measure. % is basically measuring out of total # of videos we have how many are actually shared).

3) % of new non-users who were shared a video who became a member on the portal (assuming if I am not a member and I am shared a video I could still watch it without becoming a member. I may want to do this to not automatically make that user a member becasue then I would just have non-active members lying around on the side. The downside of such a product decision is that I cant sedn them notifications of cool vidoes on their cell phone but I could on email which gets annoying).

Whie all of these metrics are interesting and prob important, I would prob keep a tight eye on # of net new customers acquired since that is the final outcome I am seeking for in terms of acquisition. I think #3 prob mesures the same thing as #1 but doeesn't focus on the # of net new customers who becasme customers due to our brand new or something. At the end of hte day I care about #1 immediately but yes I do think it's important for me to know how I got those users to become my members since that could drive other key strategic product and business decisions. I would like to add that while we measure #1 and if it is going up, we should be interested in other metrics such as engagement or retention and maybe even be somehow measure sentiment of our users on the platform. It's extremely important to know their emotions.

Overall, sicne it's a startup, customer acquisition I think is the most important for the company to stay afloat. More customers means more advertisment revenue from CTR or CPI. That is why I want to focus on # of net new customer acquired weekely.

rahul_g · Answer 2 · 2021-04-03T10:50:03+0000

Clarification

- Just to be clear - the video sharing experirence being referred to is for 3rd party platforms or does it include video sharing for videos posted from the same platform, assuming it can be both

- when you say video sharing Im assuming you mean you can post and consume the link on the social media site (Without leaving)

- Assuiming this feature is newly introduced ie you couldn't do it earlier(you could probably post but not consume it ie you had to leave the site to consume)

- Assuming the feature allows you to preview content (thumbnails or clip) before you click so you know what youre clicking on

Why does this feature exist?

- Enables user to share with their network that they find interesting or of value or both

- From social media perspective it's meant to drive more engagement (since videos generate better engagement), engagement can be measure by depth or breadth ie time spent or number of sessions respectively though in my view Breadth of engagement is a second order effect

- Creator side

- Allows me to express better, more users can consume what I want to express (since they dont leave the site/the experience is richer)

- Consumer sided

- Consumption experience is better, I can see and preview content easily

- I dont have to leave the site to consume

Creator primary metric

As SM company throught this I would want to encourage more creation so I would measure

Video shared posts as the primary metrics with 2 cuts to it

% of posts that are video posts +

Total posts posted with posts per user/number of user posting cuts to it

Since Ive made it easier to create content ie by sharing already created content from 3rd party video platform I expect existing creator users to post more often + more users to post since effort is lesser in creation of such posts

However this is a lagging metric so my secondary metric should balance that

Secondary metric/defensive

Bounce rate for posts with post media type cut to it -Why? as now people are posting is the quality of content being sustained

This is a leading metric

Consumer primary metric

Im looking for additional engagement, I considered posts per user as a indicator but it misses nuances like type of content For example user may consume video which leads to 5 mins of engagement vs 2 posts that lead to 2 mins of engagement, as SM company I would prefer deeper engagement

however I would want to keep an eye on true engagement/just because a user scrolled past a post slowly doesnt count as engagement so I would want to look at true engagement mins

So my primary metric would be meaningul video engagegment + engagement total with a per user cut to it + along with % of users with meangingful engagement

between these metric I would be able to ensure that we are growing in the right direction+ contribution from the video sharing feature + ensure its quality engagement- why track per user + % of users? because if more users start having meaningful engagement your per user data point might fall leading to a false alarm

Secondary metric/defensive metric would be to ensure this engagement is not cannabilising good content/leading to long term harm

so I would want to look at over all retention vs users who didnt have this feature (can be part of launch plan)

Cloud Strife · Answer 3 · 2021-02-03T02:12:54+0000

Italics represent the interviewer

[Brackets represent internal though process]

Clarify

Before going into the success metric, I would like to ask a couple clarifying questions.

[Here I will be trying to get clarification by asking who, what, when, where, how, and why. It’s also good to ask about the stage of the company/product]

You said this is a new feature: Does this mean the feature is not released yet?

That’s correct

Next I would like to make the following assumption: Since we are on a social media site, it sounds like the only people that can use this feature are users who are logged in? Will this be available to all users or a subset of users?

That’s right, only logged in users will see this feature. It will be rolled out to all users.

And they are able to use this feature specifically only on videos? I’m assuming if it’s similar to Youtube the “Share” button/UI will be located next to the video?

Correct again.

In regards to functionality, is it safe to assume it works in a similar fashion as YouTube? You click share and then you have a URL you can copy and paste? On top of that I believe Youtube also gives you a list of pre-defined apps/websites you an share too (Such as reddit/Facebook/twitter).

You’re right. But for this exercise let’s assume that you only get the URL to copy and paste.

Sounds good.

What is the monetization model? Are there any ads inside the video (like Youtube)? Ads around the video content? Is it subscription-based video platform (like Vimeo)? And if it is subscription-based, do both the content creators and the viewers have to pay?

For the sake of this exercise, let’s just assume it’s a completely ad based model and that there are only ads within the video (similar to YouTube).

Great. I just have a couple more question. What sort of company is building this social media site and feature? Is it an early stage company (like a start-up)? Late stage (like Facebook)? And do they have any specific goal in mind? User acquisition? Video engagement? Increase video views?

Great question. Let’s assume it’s an early stage company. As far as goal in mind, I can leave that up to you.

Okay. Since it’s an early stage company, I will make the assumption that the focus is more on the acquisition/engagement/retention side of things.

They want to acquire and retain users before optimizing on the monetization side (since ads tend to be a more intrusive experience)

Great. So now I want to quickly summarize.

I’m the PM for a video sharing feature that is yet to be released. It is planned to be rolled out to all users. It will work in the similar way as the Youtube share feature, but will only include a link you can copy and paste. The video will periodically play an ad (like Youtube). This is being build by an early-stage startup focused on engagement.

Yup, sounds about right.

Awesome. The one last thing I want to clarify is a high level goal for the feature. Since this is an early stage startup, and this is a video sharing feature, I would like to set the following goal:

User Goal: Help users easily share their favorite video content with their friends and family.

Sounds good to me.

So now that I have a good understanding of the feature and a high level goal. I want to go through the following steps.

Identify some users/stakeholders of the feature
Go through each user/stakeholders user journey to get a sense of how they use the feature
List out relevant metrics for each user/stakeholder
Evaluate the metrics to see which one best aligns with my goal
Summarize my results

Sounds like a good plan

Identify users

I can think of the following users/stakeholders

The user consuming the content
The company/platform hosting the content (like Youtube)
The content creator
The advertiser

Am I missing anything?

No, that sounds about right

Okay. Now I want to go through the user journey of each to get an idea how each user will be effected by the new feature

User Journey

User Consuming content

User views a video (either partially or fully)
1. User decides not to share the video (churn)
User decides to share the video. Once user shares the video the following can happen
1. The user who the video was shared with watches the video
2. The user who the video was shared with does not watch the video
3. The user who the video was shared with also shares the link
User who the video was shared with decided to join the social media site (assuming this is a new user)
User who the video was shared with starts to do other things within the social media sites (assuming this is an existing user)

The company/platform hosting the content (like Youtube)

When a user shares a video content sharing has the potential to go up
This might increase the amount of bandwidth needed to share video

Content Creator

If users share a video they will get more views on their content
This could potentially increase their revenue

The advertiser

If a user shares a video and that user views enough video they will, they will be able to serve an ad to the user
The user will either click on the ad or not

Now I want to list some relevant metrics pertaining to each user

Relevant Metric

[Here I will go through the AARM metrics

Aqustion

Activation

Retention

Monetization]

User Consuming content

# of times a video was shared (week over week)

Amount of minutes watched before video was shared

# of times a video was shared and viewed

# of times a video was shared and not viewed (Churn)

# of new users acquired through a video shared

% breakdown new vs existing users of when a video was shared

Conversion rate of video shares with new users

Content Creator

# of new views acquired by the shared content

# of times their content was shared (as a whole or each video)

% breakdown of new vs existing users viewing their content

How many minutes of their content was viewed

The company/platform hosting the content (like Youtube)

Amount of revenue generated through ads

Advertisers

# Number of ads serve /impressions

Click-Through-rate (CTR) fo the ads

Cost per impression/Click (if it’s dynamic)

CTR breakdown of new vs existing users

Evaluate Metrics

Now that we have a good good senes of our users and their pertaining metrics, I want to evaluate which ones would be more relevant to our feature and goal.

To reiterate, are goal was to help users easily share their favorite video content with their friends and family.

Thus, on the user side we want to make sure they are sharing video. But I also think, we want to make sure that video being shared is being viewed (else we would get a false positive in a sense that users are sharing irrelevant content). Assuring that users share relevant content will help with engagement on the content creator side (their content will get more views), keep users engaged (since the content is relevant), and help advertisers (more ads serve to a more engaged user).

Thus I would look at the following two high level metrics

# of times videos are shared (week over week)

# of minutes videos are viewed in reaction to a shared link (week over week)

If I had to pick a single metric I would select the second one: of minutes videos are viewed in reaction to a shared link (week over week)

This will help us gauge how much more engagement the share feature is bringing to the platform, and having users watch more videos makes both the content creators and advertisers happy.

Summarize

To quickly summarize, as the PM for the new share feature I decided to focus on the goal of making it easier for a user to easily share their video content with friends of family. We looked through a couple stakeholders to get a sense of who is impacted from this new feature. We then look at some pertaining metrics with each stake holder and decided to go with to go with the following metric:

# of minutes videos are viewed in reaction to a shared link (week over week)

Self assessment:

I could have asked a bit more about the social media company to get more context. What sort of social media company is it? More like Facebook, tTwitter, TikTok? Is it trying to target a specific set of users (teens, millennials, older generation?).
Ask about what type of video content is being displayed? Long video, short video?
Perhaps I could have asked what platform the feature or company delivers content (mobile or web)?
On top of a user goal, should I have also listed a company goal? For example, Company Goal: Aquire more users and engagement by sharing videos.

While I could have asked many more clarification question, I feel like my clarification portion of this question was getting quite lengthy. Plus in a real interview it’s impossible to cover everything.