Define Success Metrics for Meta Video Calling: North Star, Funnel and Guardrails

You are the product manager responsible for video calling at Meta. Define what success looks like for this product: the goal video calling serves, the single metric you would treat as its north star, the supporting and guardrail metrics around it, and how you would use them to judge whether video calling is getting better. ```hint Follow one call from start to finish Trace a single call from the decision to call, through ringing and connecting, to the conversation itself and whether the same people call again. Each step suggests its own metric, and some obvious counts can rise even when the experience gets worse. ``` ### Clarifying Questions - Does video calling here mean calls in Messenger, WhatsApp, Instagram, or the shared calling technology behind all of them? - Are group calls and calls between businesses and customers in scope, or only calls between people who know each other? - Is the goal a company-level definition of success, or a team scorecard with quarterly targets? - Are there markets or network conditions leadership cares about most, such as regions where bandwidth is limited? ### What a Strong Answer Covers - A goal for video calling tied to Meta's mission of connecting people, stated before any metric - A north-star metric with a precise definition, the reasons it beats the alternatives, and its known weaknesses - Supporting metrics across the call experience (reach, starting calls, connecting, call quality, depth, repeat use), read by 1:1 versus group, device and network - Guardrails for unwanted calls, privacy, battery and data use, and app health - How the metrics are used: baselines, targets, diagnosis when the north star moves, and experiment decisions ### Follow-up Questions - Weekly call volume rose while your north star fell. What could explain it, and what would you check first? - How would you measure call quality without access to anything said inside an encrypted call? - A new feature makes calls longer but lowers the share of calls that connect. Do you ship it? - Suppose the scope narrows to video calling in Messenger alone and you are asked to set goals rather than only define success. How would you turn your metrics into targets, a goal hierarchy and owners the team can be held to?