You're the PM for all of Instagram Stories. What is your North Star metric?

In this question, the interviewer is asking about your understanding of the key determinant of success or the most important focus for a product you are managing. For Instagram Stories, you are being asked what the North Star metric would be - the one metric that most clearly communicates the core value that your product delivers to customers. As a PM, your objective is to grow this metric. It should reflect customer usage and engagement, as those are usually solid indicators of a product's overall health.

Remember, a good North Star Metric should align with the product road map and vision, it should represent value for both users and the business, and it should ideally be influenced by user interaction within the platform.

In the case of Instagram Stories, given that it's a feature deeply centered around user engagement and interaction, the North Star metric could be "Daily Active Users (DAU) viewing Stories". This metric represents how many unique users are viewing Stories on Instagram on a daily basis. It has a direct correlation with the user engagement and adoption of the Stories feature. Moreover, if we are driving this key metric up, it means we are on the right path of maintaining and possibly expanding usage of Instagram Stories.

Another good North Star metric for Instagram Stories could be the "Average number of Stories shared per user daily". This encompasses not only the consumption aspect but also the creation aspect of Stories. If more users are actively creating and sharing Stories, it not only indicates user adoption and engagement, but also contributes to overall platform content, driving more user interaction, time spent and potentially, revenue from advertisements.