Defining a Success Metrics Framework for Reddit as a Platform

You are a product manager on Reddit's product team. Leadership wants a clear way to tell whether Reddit, as a whole, is succeeding. Explain how you would measure that: which metrics you would track, which one you would treat as the primary measure of success, and how the rest support or check it. ```hint Map the loop first Before naming any metric, sketch how value moves between the people who post, the people who vote and comment, the moderators who run communities and the people who only read, and find where a healthy loop would show up in the data. ``` ### Clarifying Questions - Does "success" mean the whole platform, or a single surface such as the home feed or one product area? - Is this framework about user and community health, or for a business review in which advertising revenue leads? - Do logged-out visitors who land on a thread from a search engine count as users Reddit serves, or only people with accounts? - Is the output a weekly operating dashboard or a small set of annual company goals? ### What a Strong Answer Covers - Reddit's value loop and its stakeholders, with a stated goal the metrics serve - One precisely defined primary metric (unit, qualifying action, time window) and why it beats the obvious alternatives - Supporting metrics organized by stakeholder or lifecycle stage, each tied back to the primary metric - Guardrails that catch growth bought at the cost of content quality, trust and safety, moderator burden or advertiser value - How the metrics would be segmented, and what you would do when one of them moves ### Follow-up Questions - Your primary metric rises while the share of new posts that receive any comment falls. What do you conclude, and what do you check first? - How would you measure the health of a single subreddit, and how does that differ from the platform view? - How would you keep bots, spam accounts and vote manipulation from inflating your numbers?