Metrics question
What metrics would you track if you were PM of Facebook Birthdays?
- Metrics
- Medium
Practice this question out loud. An AI interviewer asks it, follows up like a real interviewer would, and scores your answer. Type or speak.
Start a mock interview on this question · Mock interview from a job description
What this question tests
Tests building a metric tree for a narrow, low-frequency feature, tying it back to the platform's larger goals around social connection and daily engagement.
How to approach it
- Clarify the feature: Facebook Birthdays surfaces friends' birthdays and prompts posting on their timeline or sending a greeting.
- Define the goal it serves: driving a low-effort, high-frequency reason to open the app and post, contributing to daily engagement.
- Primary metrics: % of users who see a birthday reminder and take action (post, message, or call), and birthdays acknowledged per user per year.
- Secondary metrics: session opens attributable to the birthday notification, and content generated (posts/comments on the birthday person's timeline).
- Look at the recipient side too: how many birthday greetings a user receives, since social reciprocity drives return visits for the birthday person.
- Guardrail: notification fatigue, tracked via opt-out/mute rate for birthday reminders.
What a strong answer includes
- Separates the metric into the actor (person reminded) and the recipient (birthday person), since both sides matter for the feature's viral, reciprocal design.
- Ties the feature back to daily engagement, its real strategic purpose, rather than treating it as a standalone utility.
- Adds a guardrail (mute/opt-out rate) recognizing that birthday notifications can become annoying at scale.
- Gives an illustrative benchmark: assume 60% action rate among users who see a reminder as a healthy target, marked as assumption.
Common mistakes
- Treating this as a trivial feature not worth a real metric tree, giving a shallow answer.
- Ignoring the two-sided nature of the feature (reminder recipient vs birthday person).
- No guardrail for notification fatigue, a common complaint about this exact feature.
Likely follow-up questions
- How would you segment metrics by relationship closeness (close friend vs acquaintance)?
- How would you test a change to the reminder's timing or copy?
- What would declining action rate over time tell you?
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Learn the skill behind it
Chapters of the AI PM course that teach what this question tests.
- Chapter 9: Prove it paid off: outcomes, economics, and pricing
- Chapter 2: Data fluency: SQL, logs, and reading the truth yourself
- Chapter 14: Get the job: the AI PM interview loop