Metrics question

How would you measure the success of Instagram’s close friends stories feature?

Practice this question out loud. An AI interviewer asks it, follows up like a real interviewer would, and scores your answer. Type or speak.

What this question tests

Metrics thinking for a niche, intimacy focused feature where engagement volume alone would be a misleading success signal.

Clarify the feature's purpose: close friends stories let users share more casual, personal content with a smaller, trusted audience, which is about depth, not reach.
Define the north star: percentage of active users who maintain an active close friends list and post to it regularly, not total posts platform wide.
Add a quality metric: reply or reaction rate on close friends stories compared to regular stories, since a more intimate audience should drive higher engagement per view.
Add a retention link: whether close friends list users show higher overall app retention than users who don't use the feature, since it may deepen platform stickiness.
Add a guardrail: list churn, meaning users removing people from or abandoning their close friends list, which signals the feature isn't delivering the intended trust.
Set an illustrative target, for example assuming close friends story users show a 10 percent higher 90 day retention than non users.

Correctly identifies that this feature should be measured by depth and intimacy, not raw volume, matching its actual purpose.
Compares engagement rate on close friends stories against regular stories as a meaningful quality benchmark.
Gives an illustrative retention lift number, connecting the feature to a broader business outcome, not just its own usage.
Names list churn as a guardrail, a subtle but real signal that the feature isn't building the intended trust.

Measuring only total posts or total users who tried the feature once, missing whether it's actually valued.
Ignoring the retention connection, missing the chance to show this feature's broader business value.

How would you distinguish users who tried the feature once from those who use it as a habit?
How would you know if the feature is cannibalizing engagement on regular stories rather than adding incremental value?