Notes on Setting Metrics for Facebook Marketplace

Introduction

• Mock interview focused on setting metrics for Facebook Marketplace.
• Interviewers: Steven and Neri.
• Neri's background: consulting experience, product management internship at Apple, and future role at Facebook.

Understanding Facebook Marketplace

• Definition: A two-sided platform for buyers and sellers to discover, browse, and list items.
• Key Features:
  • Accessible to anyone without needing an official storefront.
  • Local community focus, allowing users to sell within their geographic area.

Product Goals

• Aligning with Facebook's mission to create community and bring people closer together.
• Empowering users to buy and sell products via technology.
• Main focus: Engagement metrics to measure user value and usage.

Thought Process on Metrics

1. Overall Goals:
   • Understand the success metrics of Marketplace.
   • Identify key user behaviors and valuable actions.
2. Key Focus:
   • Prioritize metrics that drive the team towards success, avoiding unnecessary complexity.

Proposed Metrics

1. Core Engagement Metrics

• Active User Metrics:
  • Weekly Active Users:
    • Definition: Users who interacted with at least one post per week.
    • Separate definitions for buyers and sellers.
  • Active Seller Definition: Posting at least one listing per week.

2. Transaction Estimation Metrics

• Sales Transaction Estimates:
  • Use messaging interactions (e.g., six back-and-forth messages) as a proxy for successful transactions.
  • Consider sellers marking items as sold or removing listings as indicators of sales.

3. Distribution Metrics

• Analyze distribution of purchase behaviors:
  • Number of purchases/sales per buyer/seller per week.
  • Understand user concentration to ensure the platform serves everyday buyers and sellers.

4. Time Spent Metrics

• Monitor average time spent on the platform per user to gauge engagement.
  • Consider potential negative implications if time spent doesn't correlate with finding desirable products.

5. Retention Metrics

• 28-day retention for both buyers and sellers to assess repeat engagement.
• Calculate stickiness ratio: Weekly Active Users / Monthly Active Users.

Risks and Considerations

• Focus on engagement metrics may overlook non-users and geographical distribution of users.
• Consider acquisition and awareness metrics to understand broader user engagement.
• Avoid potential cannibalization of other Facebook commerce initiatives.
• Monetization Metrics: Not included in the initial metrics, as engagement should be a precursor to monetization.

Closing Thoughts

• Importance of discussing trade-offs between engagement and other goals.
• Need for quality metrics to ensure a good user experience (e.g., addressing issues with blocked items or bad experiences).

Self-Reflection and Feedback

• Emphasis on the importance of engaging interviewers and articulating rationale clearly.
• Suggestions for improvement:
  • More explicit differentiation between buyer and seller metrics.
  • Establishing a clear north star metric for guiding success.
• Tips for understanding metrics:
  • Relate textbook concepts to real-world product experiences to enhance comprehension.