Choose the North-Star and Guardrail Metrics for Facebook Trip-Planning Suggestions

You are the product manager at Meta responsible for a travel recommendation product on Facebook. How would you decide whether it is succeeding? Explain what the product is for, which metrics you would track for the different people who use it, which single metric you would treat as the main measure of success, and what you would watch to make sure that success is not coming at a hidden cost. ```hint Follow one trip Picture one person planning a trip and trace each step they take with the product, from asking or browsing to actually visiting a place. Ask which step proves they got real value, and who else on Facebook takes part along the way. ``` ### Clarifying Questions - Is the product the flow where someone posts asking friends for travel tips and friends reply with tagged places, or a system that suggests destinations and places automatically? - Does it cover choosing where to go, planning what to do once there, or both? - Is the goal more value for travelers and their friends, more traffic to local businesses' Pages, or revenue from travel advertisers? - Is this a newly launched product or a mature feature being re-evaluated? ### What a Strong Answer Covers - A stated definition of the product and its goal before any metric is proposed. - The people involved (travelers, friends who recommend, local businesses) and the journey each one takes. - A primary success metric that reflects real value to travelers, with a reasoned rejection of vanity alternatives. - Supporting metrics along the journey, plus guardrails for spam, notification fatigue, privacy and the rest of Facebook. - How the metrics would be measured and validated, given that trips are infrequent and visits happen offline. ### Follow-up Questions - Requests for recommendations are up sharply, but the share that receive a reply within a day has fallen. What could explain it, and what would you do? - Most travelers never check in at the places they visit. How would you estimate whether a recommendation led to a real visit? - Should local businesses be allowed to reply to travel requests with their own Pages, and how would you measure the effect of allowing it?