Pick a North Star and Guardrails for Instagram's Close Friends Story Sharing

Instagram lets someone share a story with a hand-picked Close Friends list instead of with all of their followers. You are a product manager at Meta. How would you measure whether this Close Friends option for stories is succeeding? Explain what success means for the feature, which metrics you would track, which one you would treat as primary, and what would warn you that its growth is coming at a cost. ```hint Start from why it exists Ask what a person gets from sharing with a small chosen group that a regular story does not give them, and what the people on that list get. A good success metric should rise only when that value is delivered, not just when more stories exist. ``` ### Clarifying Questions - Is this a health check on the feature as it stands, or is the measurement meant to support a decision, such as investing more in it or changing how lists work? - Should success count only activity inside Close Friends, or also its effect on Instagram overall, including whether it pulls posting away from regular stories? - Do replies and reactions to Close Friends stories, which arrive as direct messages, count as part of the feature's success? - Should sharers and viewers be measured separately, and are there priority segments such as teens or creators? ### What a Strong Answer Covers - The purpose of Close Friends for sharers and for the people on their lists, tied to Instagram's goals - A journey from discovering the list to habitual sharing and viewing, with a metric at each stage - A north-star metric defended against alternatives, including how it could be inflated or misread - Guardrails for cannibalization of regular stories, sharing with the wrong audience, safety and overall Instagram health - How to show the feature causes the outcome, given network effects between friends ### Follow-up Questions - Close Friends stories rose while regular stories fell by about the same amount. Is that a success? - How would you run an experiment on a change to Close Friends when one person's sharing changes what their friends see? - Your north-star metric falls sharply in one country after an app release. How would you find the cause?