Product improvement: make sharing posts, reels and stories on Instagram work better

You are a product manager at Instagram. How would you improve its sharing feature: the tools people use to pass posts, reels and stories along to others, whether to someone on Instagram or to people and apps outside it? Explain the goal you would pursue, whom you would focus on, which problems you would solve and how you would measure the result. ```hint Decide what a share is for People share on Instagram to start a conversation with a friend, to show something on their own story, or to send it to someone who is not on Instagram at all. Pick which of these you are improving, and why, before you list features. ``` ### Clarifying Questions - Which sharing surfaces are in scope: sending content in direct messages, resharing it to your own story, or sharing it out through links and other apps? - What should the improvement serve: more conversations in messages, more engagement in the app, or growth from content reaching people outside Instagram? - Should I cover every content type, or focus on one, such as reels or feed posts? - Must the design respect creators' existing controls, such as turning off resharing of their posts to stories? ### What a Strong Answer Covers - A clear goal for sharing tied to what Instagram is trying to achieve, and a primary metric that reflects it - Sharer and recipient segments, such as friends trading funny content, creators spreading their work and shoppers asking for opinions, with a justified focus - Specific friction in today's share flow for the chosen segment, traced through the steps from tapping share to the recipient's response - Prioritized solutions with their trade-offs, such as keeping sharing inside the app versus sending it to other apps, and reach versus creator control - Success metrics with guardrails for spam, privacy and notification overload ### Follow-up Questions - A change raises the number of shares, but recipients open fewer of them. Was it a win, and how would you find out? - Sharing out to other messaging apps can bring in new users but moves conversations off Instagram. How would you decide how prominent to make it? - How would you keep a sharing improvement from also speeding the spread of misleading or harmful content?