Metrics question
You are the PM of Instagram stories. What goal would you set and how would you measure success?
Practice this question out loud. An AI interviewer asks it, follows up like a real interviewer would, and scores your answer. Type or speak.
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What this question tests
Setting a goal and matching metric for a specific, well known ephemeral content format.
How to approach it
- State the format's core purpose, lower pressure, ephemeral sharing that increases how often and how casually people post, compared to permanent feed posts.
- Set the primary goal, increase the percent of active users who post at least one story a week, since posting frequency reflects the format's core value.
- Define the success metric, weekly story creation rate per active user, paired with story completion or view through rate to ensure content is also consumed.
- Add a guardrail, report rate or negative feedback rate on stories, since ephemeral, casual content can sometimes lead to oversharing regret.
- Consider segmenting by user type, since creators and casual users likely have very different posting and viewing patterns.
What a strong answer includes
- Anchors the goal in the format's specific value proposition, lowering the barrier to sharing, rather than reusing feed post metrics like likes.
- Pairs a creation metric with a consumption metric, weekly posting rate and view through rate, since a healthy format needs both sides working.
- Adds a specific guardrail, negative feedback or deletion rate, acknowledging the real risk of oversharing regret unique to ephemeral content.
Common mistakes
- Reusing standard feed post metrics like permanent likes and comments, which do not fit the ephemeral nature of this format.
- Measuring only creation or only consumption instead of both sides of the format.
- No guardrail for potential oversharing or content regret.
Likely follow-up questions
- How would you measure success differently for creators versus casual users?
- What would you do if creation rate went up but view through rate dropped?
More metrics questions
- How would you measure the success of Facebook Likes?Meta · Metrics · Medium
- How would you measure improvements made to Facebook messenger?Meta · Metrics · Easy
- Imagine you are the PM in charge of Reactions on Facebook - the new way to interact with posts by using “love”, “haha”, “wow”, “sad”, and “angry” reactions. What would success look like in terms of number of non-like reactions per post at launch and how do you come up with this? Would this number differ by reaction? Why or why not?Meta · Metrics · Hard
- You launched a new signup flow to encourage new users to add more profile information. A/B test results indicate that the % of people that added more information increased by 8%. However, 7 day retention decreased by 2%. What do you do?Google · Metrics · Hard
- Define the metrics for YouTube search.Google · Metrics · Medium
- You are the PM of Instagram app. The MAU has been constant but DAU has declined. What will you do?Meta · Metrics · Medium
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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