How would you improve Facebook Stories? | Facebook PM Interview
How would you improve Facebook Stories? | Facebook PM Interview
Product Improvement - Facebook Product Manager Interview Question: How would you improve Facebook Stories?
Let’s get started with the solution (remember to follow the framework),
Step 1: Describe the Product
To start off in the right direction, you need to explain your understanding of the product – what does it do, who uses it, and how.
Facebook is a social media platform that mainly focuses on letting users share parts of their life using images, texts, videos, stay connected with friends and family, and to discover, share and express what’s matter to them. It has multiple elements like the messenger, marketplace, groups, games, jobs but for today's discussion, we will focus only on Facebook Stories.
“Facebook Stories is a feature with which users can share text, photos, video, music, etc. with their social network. This content gets automatically deleted after 24 hours, which allows the user to post trivial content more frequently without spamming their social media profiles with the same.
They appear as a separate section at the top of the feed and users can tap on the images to access them. Users can also reply to stories with a direct message, share stories and react to a story with emojis.”
Facebook is majorly accessed from mobile app (Android, IOS), desktop web & app, etc.
Some of the competitors of Facebook are TikTok, Snapchat, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest, Google, WeChat etc.
Now that we are clear on the product description and the interviewer is also onboarded.
Time to move on to the next step: Ask Clarifying Questions.
You: “Before we move on, I have a few clarifying questions I want to ask. Shall I proceed?”
Step 2: Ask clarifying questions to narrow the scope of the question
Q) What aspect of Facebook stories do we want to improve? Are there any particular goals we are looking at? like,
Improve user engagement on stories?
Increase user retention?
Increase revenue?
A) It’s up to you. You are free to choose.
Q) Are we focusing on any particular platform like desktop web or mobile app?
A) Let’s focus on Mobile App.
Q) For the improvement are we focusing on a particular region or target group?
A) No, it’s up to you.
Step 3: Define the Goal you want to achieve.
Facebook's mission is to give people the power to build community and bring the world closer together. People use Facebook to stay connected with friends and family, to discover what's going on in the world, and to share and express what matters to them.
I feel user engagement is something that aligns very closely with this mission of Facebook. Also, if we can increase the user engagement on Facebook Stories, it will also lead to an increase in user retention and possibly revenue for Facebook.
Mention your approach -
“Now that we have defined the goals for this problem, I will go ahead and list down the user segments for this product, followed by the pain points these users are facing, prioritizing them, and coming up with a prioritized list of solutions and metrics that we will track to identify its success.”
Step 4: List the User Segments and choose one segment to focus on.
Facebook Stories is used by a wide variety of user groups and across many geographies.
We can broadly categories the user segments into,
Creators:
Individual users - Majority of stories creators who are using it to share a part of their lives through pictures, videos, sharing posts, etc.
Content creators - Users that are part of a media handle who creates stories professionally. e.g. celebrities/influencers who use Facebook to promote a product or share ideas.
Advertisers - Brands/companies that use Facebook stories as an advertising channel to promote their products.
Viewers:
Users who view Facebook stories.
Now, Select your user group and state your reason for the same. -
“For the scope of this question, I plan to focus on the needs of the creators and viewers of the Individual Facebook users segment, as this segment of users is very large in number who are always looking for new ways to communicate effectively with their friends and family.
If we can solve the pain points of these users, and help them engage more then that would have the most significant impact on user engagement, and the benefit can trickle down to other segments, which in turn can lead to an increase in retention and revenue as well.”