Make the 2016 Go or No-Go Call on Adding Stories to the Facebook App
Company: Meta
Role: Product Manager
Category: Product / Decision Making
Difficulty: medium
Interview Round: Other
It is 2016 and you are a product manager at Facebook. The company is weighing whether to add Stories (photos and short videos that disappear after 24 hours and are viewed separately from News Feed) to the main Facebook app. Explain how you would have decided whether to launch it: what you would need to believe, how you would test it, which results would justify a launch, and what would make you hold back.
```hint Look past the feature's own numbers
A Stories test can look healthy on its own usage while drawing activity and revenue away from the rest of the app. Decide which existing behaviors it might replace before you choose what the test has to show.
```
### Clarifying Questions
- Is the decision about building the feature at all, or about rolling out a version that has already been built and tested?
- Is the main goal more personal sharing among friends, more time in the app, or staying relevant to younger users drawn to other camera-first apps?
- Should the decision account for Stories-style features in the company's other apps, or treat the Facebook app on its own?
- Which markets and devices would the first launch cover?
### What a Strong Answer Covers
- The 2016 context and the specific problem Stories would solve for Facebook users.
- A goal and testable hypotheses stated before any metric.
- A test design that fits a social feature with network effects and a novelty effect.
- Success metrics plus guardrails for News Feed sharing, overall engagement, ad revenue and app performance.
- Launch, iterate and stop criteria agreed in advance, ending in a clear recommendation.
### Follow-up Questions
- The test shows Story posting up but News Feed posts down by about the same amount. Do you launch?
- How would you randomize the test, given that a Story matters only if the poster's friends can see it?
- Instagram's version of Stories is growing quickly. Does that make a Facebook version more or less attractive?
Overview: A launch-decision question set in 2016: explain how you would have decided whether Facebook should add Stories to its main app. It tests reading the competitive context, stating goals and hypotheses, designing a test for a networked feature, and weighing cannibalization of News Feed and ad revenue against new sharing.