Metrics question
You are the product manager for the 'verified' feature of Instagram. How do you measure success?
- Meta
- 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.
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What this question tests
Whether the candidate can define success for a trust and safety adjacent feature where the primary value is credibility, not engagement.
How to approach it
- Clarify the goal of verification: helping users and brands trust that an account is who it claims to be, especially public figures and businesses.
- Build a metric tree: adoption (applications submitted, approval rate), trust impact (reduction in impersonation reports for verified accounts), and downstream engagement (follows, DMs to verified accounts).
- Set a guardrail: false positive rate (wrongly verified accounts) and false negative rate (legitimate applicants rejected).
- Separate metrics for the applicant experience (time to decision) from metrics for the viewer experience (trust signal recognition).
What a strong answer includes
- Picks impersonation and scam report rate for verified-eligible accounts as the primary success metric, not raw badge count.
- Adds a secondary metric on applicant funnel health, such as percent of eligible public figures who apply within 90 days.
- Flags that badge count alone is a vanity metric since it rewards volume over correct decisions.
Common mistakes
- Treating number of verified accounts as the success metric on its own.
- Ignoring the cost of false positives, which erodes trust in the badge itself.
Likely follow-up questions
- How would you detect if the badge is being gamed or sold?
- What would you do if approval rate is high but impersonation complaints aren't dropping?
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
More questions from Meta
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