You are the PM of Friends on Facebook. The % of friending has dropped by 5% over the week. What happened?

Introduction

The recent 5% drop in friending activity on Facebook over the past week is a significant concern that requires immediate attention. As the PM of Friends, I'll approach this issue systematically to identify, validate, and address the root cause while considering both short-term and long-term implications for our user engagement metrics.

Step 1

Clarifying Questions (3 minutes)

• Has there been any recent change to the friending feature or algorithm?

• Are we seeing this drop across all user segments or specific demographics?

• Have we observed any changes in related metrics like active users or time spent on the platform?

• Are there any known technical issues or outages that coincided with this drop?

• Has the definition of the "% of friending" metric remained consistent?

• Are there any seasonal trends we typically observe around this time of year?

Why these questions matter: They help establish context, rule out obvious causes, and guide our investigation. For instance, if the drop is isolated to a specific user segment, it narrows our focus considerably.

Hypothetical answer: Let's assume we've learned that the drop is consistent across user segments, there have been no recent feature changes, and no technical issues have been reported. This suggests we need to look deeper into user behavior and external factors.

Impact on solution approach: With these answers, we can focus on broader trends and user behavior patterns rather than technical or segmentation issues.