Measure Facebook Dating: north-star metric, journey funnel and safety guardrails

You are the product manager for Facebook Dating, the opt-in dating experience built into the Facebook app. Leadership wants a clear way to judge whether the product is succeeding. Define the goal you would hold it to, the metrics you would track across the product, and the one metric you would treat as the primary measure of success, together with what would keep that metric honest. ```hint Find the value moment In dating, a user who fully succeeds may stop using the product. Decide which step of the journey actually delivers value, and how you could observe it when much of it happens in private messages or offline. ``` ### Clarifying Questions - Is the priority growing adoption among existing Facebook users, deepening engagement among people already on Dating, or Dating's contribution to the wider Facebook app? - Which intents should it serve (casual dating, long-term relationships or both), and should success be defined the same way for each? - Which outcomes can we observe: only in-product events such as likes, matches and messages, or also off-platform outcomes through surveys or opt-in check-ins? - In which markets is Dating established, and where is having enough nearby compatible profiles still the main constraint? ### What a Strong Answer Covers - A goal linked to the company mission and to Dating's position inside the Facebook app, including the advantage of an existing identity and existing connections. - The journey mapped end to end (discovering Dating, building a profile, expressing interest, matching, talking, meeting, the outcome) with a metric for each stage. - A primary metric that reflects value delivered to both people in a match, with its measurement limits addressed. - Guardrails covering safety and harassment, how evenly attention is spread across users, profile authenticity, and effects on the core app. - How to read retention when success can mean a user leaves, and which segments to cut the metrics by. ### Follow-up Questions - A ranking change raised your primary metric but also raised reports of unwanted messages. How do you decide whether to keep it? - How would you estimate how many matches lead to an in-person date without reading private messages? - A small set of profiles is receiving most of the likes. Which metric would show this, and what would you change?