Facebook Product Manager Interview: Facebook Lite Goals

you're the pm for facebook lite how would you set goals [Music] hey everyone uh we're here today to do another exponent mock interview we're going to be doing a product management interview with abed um abed first can you just introduce yourself for everyone hey thank you for having me um so my name is albert i'm an incoming product manager at facebook i was actually a client of exponent and it was really helpful for me before that i was at kareem karim is a ride-hailing and the super app of the middle east region and it was acquired by uber i think last year and before that i worked on different startups in different industries in the middle east region awesome well we're super excited to have you all bet and it's so cool to hear that exponent has worked well for you for those of you watching if you want to learn more about exponents courses coaching and community you can go to try exponent dot com um now i want to jump into this facebook uh pm interview we're going to be doing an execution style interview so it's going to be focused more on analytical type uh things like that and abed should be a pro given that he just went through the interview process um and so the question that i'd like to ask you today about is you're the pm for facebook lite how would you set goals facebook lite great um so just a couple of like confirmations and questions that i would like to to kind of like um um check with you so facebook lite is basically the light version of facebook where it's catered to like developing countries people with um less powerful phones and like in terms of limited connectivity whether on the speed or the download code is that correct yes that's exactly right we use light to help people of all bandwidth access access facebook in the experiences and i think my my other question is that um i'm going to set the goals for today not assuming that i'm going back in time with facebook launched like is that correct that's right yeah we're focusing looking forward for the goals um how would we set up the goals but not backwards cool cool cool um so just give me a second to kind of um articulate the mission um if that's okay that sounds great um and in the meantime for those of you watching please do like and subscribe if you like this type of content and want to see more of it every single like and subscribe helps us uh encourages us to make sure that this content is valuable for you and that we will make more of it so please do share your feedback and thoughts and even comments below if you have any questions we try to answer every single question that's asked great so the the mission uh for facebook is to um give the people to the tools to um to connect and kind of like bring the word closer together and my understanding or the way i see facebook live is at the code of that mission because if you think about it facebook light is trying to connect the people who are kind of like in slightly underprivileged circumstances and i think um facebook being a champion for um inclusivity um and just ensuring that everyone is served with that service uh is is being kind of like the code of the mission and facebook being true to this to its mission i think it's it's a it's uh one of the key pillars to kind of like bring on board the people who are in developed countries with uh certain technology limitations so that's where i feel light is quite important and it's it's actually one of the most important things giving that that facebook adoption kind of saturated and in the developed world in the developed countries and if facebook needs to grow then kind of needs to to get more users on board and i think those users are in those um developed countries sorry underdeveloped countries or developing countries so if facebook wants to bring the next billion users i think light could be one of the strategies different strategies could be um the um the uh the drone that is beaming internet or just like allowing more access to different areas so i think that could be one of the strategies to bring more users on board got it um now just to push back a little bit so uh yes we could have the goals of inclusivity which i love that you started there um but at what point do we know that we're not no longer providing the same facebook experience so i could imagine an argument being made like hey maybe facebook should be we can print the newsfeed on newspapers um and we can put the news feed on newspapers we can distribute them to like all of people around the world but i might be worried about that because it's not really providing the same experience as what facebook is known to provide or you know it's not the same thing so how would you think about whether or not light falls into that category of kind of being more like a newspaper or less like the actual facebook experience and trading that off with inclusivity great i think that's a great question and it's a good um like exercise to think about it the way i think about light is is pretty much it's it's it's hoping to be the cool experience of facebook and i think most of us when we're using facebook we're using some core functionalities maybe um looking up at certain pictures or messaging people or just like updating our status so it's still connected to the same facebook environment so you're not out of the facebook environment you're just contributing differently so i think that's one way the other thing for facebook lite it's it's just probably a temporary solution if you think about it the word is is becoming adopting to new technologies faster so let's say there is a country that doesn't have the support for um broadband internet but this country will get broadband internet next year so you're kind of introducing them to the facebook ecosystem and then once they sort of like graduate to to to become eligible for the full facebook experience um this is where they can use the uh the normal app so it's not a completely disconnected experience it's just kind of i would say more focused on the basic needs that you would need given the limitation of technology got it okay um great response and yeah i think it sounds like what we want to do is go ahead and focus on facebook light as an on-ramp into the facebook experience then also facebook late should really represent the core experience of facebook and um i like that point as well and a facebook newspaper does not quite get at the core experience of facebook although it could be a pretty cool idea um so okay so we so we have this mission or kind of the high level objectives but can we talk a little bit more about what specific goals that we would set for facebook light and how we might go about picking those goals um and and even like would love a consideration at some point in your answer about the tam or the total adjustable market that we might have here um without this product got it so i think at this point um facebook lite has been there for years so as a product it i would say it has reached maturity in terms of like product itself um but i think the core mission of this product is to ensure that we're really solving that problem that we said we want to solve which is connecting the people who are um like have those certain challenges and for that i want to measure my success as the pm in terms of the the adoption rate for this app so basically looking at the number of people who are using the app um versus the total addressable market that we have so almost like everyone who needs the app versus how much actually we're supporting and how much we're we're serving in this new app got it so we're going to look at the um leftover users or the users that may not have access that we should be able to access or provide that experience overall adoption of this facebook like that got it okay um that makes a lot of sense i guess how would we think about um why do you think people are not using that or what is the barriers to facebook like that we want to address or focus on okay so i think um i think first of all the what's what's unique about facebook and generally all the social networks is that this network effect where you need your friends to be on facebook to kind of like be motivated to be on facebook so it's it's more or less like a snowball effect where you want to really advocate certain cities that who just maybe recently came online or recently started to get more people connected to the internet or certain devices so i think one of the things we want to look at is try to get more users on boarded on this app um i'm not sure maybe maybe it's it's it's a it's an education challenge of people not knowing about facebook but i think most of us back when facebook launched we knew about it through friends so once your friends are there you'll be there i mean it's just like allowing access for people who might not um have this um like powerful smartphone etc so the way i would i would look at this is basically trying to onboard these people and the way i would look at the total addressable market is looking at everyone with um with let's say a less powerful phone and this data i might get from the manufacturers um like number of ship devices etc and when it comes to to the network um and connectivity challenges i'm gonna try to look some data from the telcos um if if the company can provide us with this data that would give us the estimated total addressable market that we're gonna benchmark our um numbers against got it so we're gonna look at that to kind of get the total adjustable market it sounds like you know maybe the telco it sounds like what we're gonna look at is like the bandwidth constraints on phones given the different telcos and the data that they have or the data that we have with telcos um so i think that makes a lot of sense um and so we can kind of like understand or tap into why these users or how we can target these users um but i i do want to kind of come back to the bigger question of the goals so like how can we um what what exactly is our goal here and how are we going to achieve that goal or how what are the the action steps for that goal um with regards to the sector that we're talking about great great so i would say our goal is to ensure that our adoption is is is as good as it can be in terms of number of users who are using this app and we're serving in the proper way and this goal we can define as i mentioned basically the number of active users monthly active users divided by the total address of the market so if this number is going up then it means that we're actually i'm getting closer and closer to our um end goal um and that's that's when we're talking about the goal i think in terms of steps talking about the product itself um i think the product has already proved that it's uh it's a good solution for many people so it's about growing the base and in terms of steps as i mentioned i believe it's basically about allowing more people to use it and that would give us the snowball effect and the network effect that more people will come on board once their friends are on board got it um so i love this like now over tan metrics the monthly active users over the total adjustable market um can you tell me like what's the downside of that approach or that goal basically like if we just focused on that goal is there something that you might be worried about or a trade-off that we need to consider um so i i think one thing going back to uh to as you mentioned the newspaper and what kind of solutions that we want to to bring um we shouldn't think about the facebook light um in vacuum it's it's actually quiet connected to the normal app and i think it's it's allowed to install facebook light and the normal app um in different countries so i think one downside of just looking at now is that basically it's um it's it's mixed between the people who are um actually part of the tam people who are um on less powerful phones or connection um limitations with the people who are not part of that group so maybe um an iphone 11 user would download facebook lite maybe someone with a powerful android phone or with good connection with download facebook live and that could skew our numbers in terms of monthly active users so we need to figure out a way um to kind of like remove that noise and focus on the actual um the daily monthly active users that we care about that kind of like they they fit with with our um town got it yeah that's a great point i i think like the um the considering all the users that might interact with the products is really important here um so that's great um so it sounds like you know just repeat us again so we're kind of like ensuring that adoption is as good as it can be um for facebook and we've considered some trade-offs we've considered the metrics that we want to look at or evaluate um i think one thing one question that i do have is like um you know it sounds like we're gonna partner with telcos and kind of understand that um do you think the main approach here it sounds like there's maybe two approaches i'd love to hear which one you think is better one approach is we can really improve the product experience for facebook light maybe make it more rich make it more like like uh powerful things like that and um we could add more features into it that are low bandwidth for example let's say that we don't have um you know as much as good animations maybe we can make the animations better for for light users the other path we can go down is that we can really just try to make facebook light itself a lower bandwidth product so um like we can take let's say it takes some number of megabits per second like to download or to use we can reduce that even further um how would you consider these two approaches when thinking about facebook lite because both seem to fit into the idea of expanding access and assuring adoption is as good as it can be one making the product so excellent that people are talking about it and sharing with their friends another making the bandwidth so low or the constraints um not a problem anymore so that users can access it uh more readily so how would you think about these two paths for the product i i think um given the situation that we're um that we're here now and today situation the product is mature and i think a lot of brilliant pms have worked on it and kind of like really understood what the users cared about users who fit in this persona with those limitations or and those opportunities so what i believe is that there is a product market effect for those people it's just about scaling the product into people who are probably either not aware or people with even like um different limitations so we might assume that the limitation is that you need one megabit um connection maybe there are people who are left out at 128 kilobyte like per second so maybe on on the product innovation side we need to to understand first if we really need to go and optimize more um to capture a bigger market my hypothesis for now i think that is not the case i think it has been optimized and there is a good product market fit when it comes to how can we make this product a greater success um it is about how to scale the product in the hand of users um basically trying to understand what cities have not yet developed this network effect of facebook and how can we tap into these communities but from a feature perspective i think the features are quite a good representation of what a typical facebook user would use it's it's really a great thing to see um it's it's not about what you add it's not about what you cannot remove so i think facebook light has has reached that um like fine fine line between those things awesome um i want to ask one last question before we kind of jump to feedback and all that kind of stuff um what so i want to take us so we're at a very high level talking about goals i want to take us to zoom in on a certain city let's say that we've discovered we've partnered with the telcos we've discovered that there's a city that is um does not have facebook light and majority of usage maybe one percent of the users use facebook lite um and this city let's just call it um you know cityville or something um so cityville uh has one percent of users that use facebook lite um majority of the users in that city do have bandwidth constraints uh how would you think about going about expanding into that region or you know allowing more user adoption um you don't necessarily have to say like what specifically you'll do but just what questions would you ask and like how would you think about that because it seems like that's part of the core strategy here um but i'd love to hear maybe like the concrete steps that you might take to uh kind of like think about cityville and how it plays under the facebook ecosystem got it got it and i think um like being from um the middle east i think some cities have seen some um strategies done by facebook on this um on this thing and i think that's more or less like a universal strategy that can be um tailored to two regions so i think i've seen two strategies that i think they are brilliant and i would definitely do them as well um one is um partnering up with um like manufacturers of phones um so basically you have facebook lite pre-installed i think that removes a lot of the friction and it makes discoverability a lot easier so you buy a new phone and then you have facebook lite already installed so that's a lot easier from going and downloading and figuring it out the other thing is a partnership with local telcos so i've seen this in different cities and in different areas where basically telcos would would tell you that if you use facebook lite then it won't be um calculated against your overall internet code so that gives you another motivation and that's like advertisement plus motivation to actually go and explore facebook live and and use that and engage more with the app the more you engage i think pretty much you'll have more friends who are trying to get on board as well and um that's a win-win for telcos and that's for facebook as well got it um that's great yeah uh it sounds like the partnerships are really key there with the manufacturers and the telcos and that might be part of your your strategy when you actually kind of implement this goal um okay albert is there anything else that you think would be important to share about this interview question before we move on to feedback and talk a little bit about how it went yeah i think um there is one point that i wanted to also mention that i wrote down um and that is the overall trade-off and um the the basically the example that i mentioned where someone with a powerful phone might install this facebook light i think that's that's something that um that could uh potentially uh pose a threat here in terms of like cannibalization um so we might have people migrating from the normal facebook app to facebook light and that could signal a problem that we we need to to measure first and then ideally we want to understand what's driving that behavior if that happens so if we over sell facebook light maybe more people would actually start using it that wouldn't have the ultimate facebook experience a b it might have less um i don't know maybe like um advertising potential or a monetization potential um so it's it's really um a a very sensitive thing that face that like i as the pm of facebook lite need to figure out with the rest of the company with the rest of the pms on the normal facebook app to figure out what's what's our strategy in terms of like do we go full in on facebook like how would we um handle those situations where you have someone who's on facebook light and you want to push them to normal facebook app so i think there is a lot of um trade-offs that we need to make here and to ensure that the overall ltv or the overall experience for our customers it's at at its best yeah that makes a lot of sense and it it sounds like you might be watching that metric as the expansion occurs like as you bring more users on you might be watching that ltv metric or you might be watching to see the experience of the different sets of users to make sure that that doesn't happen um cool well abid uh thanks so much for doing this interview we can kind of take the interviewer hat off and i want to just first off hear from you in your own words like how do you think that went um a little bit of self-reflection on the interview and then i can share my feedback as well and again for those watching do please like and subscribe if you thought that this video was helpful or valuable to you it was an amazing conversation and i think it went really smooth however i wish as an interviewee i had more structure to kind of like anticipate the questions that you will raise and address them in my answers um this way i sound more prepared and kind of like thought through um one thing that i felt i didn't do a lot is that i did not pose and and really think strategically about the questions i i was maybe a little bit too excited to hear this problem because i i feel it's it's a relevant problem for me and then i was giving answers very quickly i think one advice um is to slow down and take notes and structure my answers in a proper way um god i mean all great points and uh yeah i think pausing is one of the things that feels so unnatural but it's so so important for interviews and i tell everyone uh that you can totally pause it's okay to pause and it's not a problem um so i i wanted to run through some of the notes that i wrote down that i thought were really effective about what you did um you started with the mission it was really fantastic the way you started you were saying like you know facebook is about inclusivity and that's why this is part of our product experience and now we're going to bubble down to here and i even asked you kind of a tough follow-up on bump and newspaper stuff and i think you handled that really well um i will say like at some points in the middle i started starting to get lost in terms of the structure or in terms of like what exactly is the goal or what exactly is your justification for that goal um and are there multiple goals or are there not multiple goals and it just helps to kind of set up front and say like hey this is my goal this is the one goal that i think we should focus on um or these are the two goals that i think we should focus on things like that um and then i think uh you also did a really good job of kind of like talking through all the different experiences and uh experiences that you had so i thought there was towards the end we had a really great example of like hey you know from where i'm from like this is some things that i've seen that were effective um and i thought it was helpful to bring in that knowledge and bring that expertise and show that you are thoughtful about products um you know if we had more time i would even encourage you to double down even more on that and say like this is what i thought was effective about telcos versus manufacturers you know telling me something a little more interesting or a little more in-depth that leverages your knowledge could be really really effective um and then another tactic that i thought you did that was very effective is that you assumed that much product was mature and you used that as kind of like a justification for the product decisions that you were using and i think that makes sense because honestly you're going to have to pick something and kind of like making that assumption seem like a reasonable one given that facebook light has been around for quite a while um so i thought that was a pretty effective approach as well um and i did ask um a lot of follow-up questions in this one so i do want to acknowledge both for you and for the viewers that um this is uh more of a conversational type of interview and these can totally happen in interviews it's a little hard to tell sometimes the interviewer will give you a lot of space to talk sometimes the interviewer will keep kind of pushing you and pushing around and trying to see if you uh can handle some of the follow-up questions and so i think you did a really effective job uh keeping your calm and answering those follow-up questions and navigating through that interview um any reactions thoughts or comments to what i just shared no no 100 i think um you're absolutely right i think in my experience as you mentioned probably i'm in my experience i had both types of interviews i had the conversational interview where it felt like i'm just chatting with a friend who's like super interested in this technology and we're just like kind of thinking about it like like someone has appeared in my company and it actually went great and sometimes you need the structure so it depends um and i think yeah both could happen well thanks everyone for watching thank you so much abit for being on the show again for those of you who want more content like this visit try exponent dot com um and good luck on your upcoming interview [Music]

Channel: Exponent

Views: 26,019

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Id: 5W8ADLi_8aI

Length: 27min 16sec (1636 seconds)

Published: Wed Oct 14 2020