Choosing a North Star and Guardrail Metrics for Meta's Gaming Expansion

Meta is expanding its investment in gaming. As the product manager accountable for this effort, which KPIs would you track to judge whether the expansion is succeeding? Define what success means for Meta, choose a primary metric, and support it with the metrics and guardrails you would watch. ```hint Success for whom Meta makes most of its money from advertising, and gaming could live in very different places: inside Facebook and Messenger, on game streams, or on VR headsets. Decide which effort you are measuring and what it is supposed to do for Meta before naming a single metric. ``` ### Clarifying Questions - Which gaming effort is in scope: games played inside Facebook and Messenger, game streaming and creators, VR games on Quest headsets, or all of them? - Is the expansion meant to deepen connection and engagement in Meta's existing apps, to earn direct revenue from games, or to build a new platform? - Who makes the games: Meta's own studios, outside developers, or both? - Over what time frame will success be judged: early adoption in the first months, or retention and revenue over a year or more? ### What a Strong Answer Covers - A stated goal for the gaming expansion, tied to Meta's mission and business model, with the scope chosen explicitly - One north-star metric that captures that goal, with a reason it beats alternatives such as raw gaming DAU or time spent - Supporting metrics across the funnel (discovery, first play, repeat play, social play, monetization) and for every side of the ecosystem: players, developers and advertisers - Guardrails that catch harm to the core apps, such as time pulled away from other surfaces, invite and notification spam, and safety problems for younger users - How the metrics would be measured for incrementality, segmented, and reprioritized as the effort matures from adoption to revenue ### Follow-up Questions - Gaming DAU doubles, but total time spent across Facebook stays flat. Is the expansion succeeding? - How would you attribute a rise in messages or friend connections to gaming rather than to other launches? - The north star is growing, but revenue per game for developers is falling. What do you do?