"YouTube Shares Are Up. What Will You Do?" | Google PM Mock Interview

Key Takeaways

hi everyone my name is bhishan from product management exercises here with sunny delay who was an engineer turned into a product manager from San Francisco and we're going to do a case study together all right so I need a question that we're gonna tackle today is this shares on YouTube have increased what do you do okay awesome cool can you hear me all right yes okay great hey guys I'm sunny so so first I would like to I would like to just clarify the question we use when we say the shares on YouTube have increased as I understand it on YouTube there are users can share videos via either the app itself internal sharing or they can share via like text message or other platforms is it a specific kind of share or and first of all are we talking about that best same sharing feature yeah we're talking about the sharing feature where users are basically sharing a video content with other users okay awesome okay is it okay if I just take a minute to to brainstorm - Cheers okay so for so these kind of situational elections the way I would I would want to approach it as a p.m. on YouTube would be to first try to understand why it happened okay and then talk about what was the impact of that happening and then from there talk think about an action plan or what we can do about it does that sound good yeah that sounds good but before diving into it I would you know as a p.m. on YouTube obviously I would be living and breathing YouTube's mission but obviously YouTube's mission is to connect content creators and have their videos the distributor in a very easy way and shares increasing overall on YouTube would be a good sign so that I would say is a positive metric so in this case nevertheless I think the same approach tool applies yeah okay so the way I would go about so for the first part of trying to determine why it happened I would look at a few areas so first I would look at I would want to ask if there is trying to figure out the timeline of when this happened so the first time I want to see is this something that occurred over the in in day day to day shares or week to week shares or months and munchers is there any information about that available that's a good question there is no seasonality information but we know that the increase has happened since last month this last month okay okay and then I would hope I would stick in with the timeline I would also think about that is it at a certain time of the year as causing the spike to happen that is it like maybe around New Year's where people are just happening to share and let's say assuming that that's not the case is that a fair assumption that no she's going out - like you mentioned and then I would go into the various demographics trying to figure out starting with geography to see is this sharing spike specific to letting certain geography and and based on depending on whatever the answer there is I would still want to figure out if it's also specific to a certain age group of users just to understand and then I can talk later of why why and how that would tie into the further investigation so maybe I'll pause there is there any information about geography or demographics yeah the increase has happened only in the US and that's yeah that's one piece of information I can share with you okay so there's no seasonality and the increase happened only in the US right do you think that the rest of the world the shares are normal and and I would also want to know in in the investigation to see if it was a certain device that was causing the spike in the shares so between in this case you know I know YouTube's on many different devices it's on things like various Google home devices on TVs mobile devices and and just with the web browser so there any information about is your device specific yeah on the increase was observed in the mobile only device okay now we're getting a lot more information us and mobile only okay and by mobile I would assume and you know mobile can go between like tablet native apps or just phone native apps is it do we have any information there or do we just want to leave it as mobile it was just you can leave it on the mobile okay cool okay so yeah in this investigation maybe I'll just quickly talk a little bit about my thinking I'm first starting out with thinking about all the internal reasons that we can figure out internal to YouTube and this is you know talks about where the users are when the users are using it and how the users are interacting with it so pulling on the thread of the internal still trying to figure out why this happened then I would go into you try to figure out more product specific to see if the spike was specific to a category as I know on YouTube there's news sports music there's just general you know influence related content do we know have any information about anything being category specific no we don't have any information on the category okay still pulling on the part of thread I would also want to know if it was specific to specific to different user cohorts I would want to know is it are the sheer spiking more on the unlike new users who have joined YouTube maybe they're causing the spike or is it specific to like users that have been around that are members and as well as may be looking at along with their maturity as well as looking at the different types of users between like the content creators and consumers I would want to see if there's any information there and so is there any any information that I should know about specific to cohorts right now our knowledge is that this sharing among the new users is increased more than among the existing users okay that's that's actually really valuable to the information there's a recap what we found out from this investigation is that it's you as specific it's happening for mobiles for mobile devices and it's happening that the the share spike is having specific to new users coming to YouTube right okay and how I would also be keen on and let me know if you want me to go into more detail or not here but I would also be keen on looking at what the how do we define new users that these users are that came on this month or maybe that came on this this week I don't want to ask that question as well sure yeah a new user is defined someone who has signed up to YouTube in the last 30 days last 30 days okay okay so I think that tells us a lot of information in really scoops scoops down what may have happened and I'm by the way I'm still on the first part of trying to figure out why it happened yeah and next we'll get to the impact but last thing that I would want to consider that I would want to consider for my investigation would be to to determine to know if there was there's any changes to the app specifically to the mobile app that was rolled out in the last 30 days and since this is a positive a positive metric increase I would want to know that hey my assumption would be that this is this was intentional so I would want to know if there was an experiment that was being run that was targeted specifically for mobile specifically for getting people to share more with a certain hypothesis around new users so I would want to know and my hypothesis would be that likely it was an apt change and specifically an experiment maybe an a/b test or a new algorithm that YouTube had rolled out that that possibly caused the spike so maybe I'll pause there any information about apt changes or experimentation yeah so um the mobile team has been looking for ways to improve engagement and retention new users so they've been running some experiments and they have some updates last month Oh perfect okay we found we found our we got deep into the investigation I think we found a reason there now I can keep going further into trying to investigate why it happened I do also want to cover what would be the impact of Thad's you want me to keep going into investigating it no I think it's good I'm so just gonna quickly wrap up so what you've done is you initially started off by discussing what the potential causes in the increase are you looked at it from different perspectives such as demographics geographical location device type then once you get some you clue that this is potentially on the device side then you look deeper and try to see what would be the cause of that and I think if we spend a couple more minutes on it we would have got to a point where we would have talked about a future that was recently rolled out for the new users that made it easier for them to share right after their first video watch we can assume that this has already been rolled out the numbers of shares have increased because of that and we can move on to the next part of the interview okay cool yeah only thing I would add kind of in my in my own analysis would be if we hadn't figured out that it was an experiment figure out specific things that we did uncover I would also want to look at like there was like any external factors that had changed that was maybe cause that's where yeah so now that we know kind of why it occurred I would move into thinking about trying to figure out okay what was the impact of this and obviously since this is a positive increase it was a there likely is an expected impact specifically from the experiment and from that experiment from the new rollout I think we would have expected certain metrics to increase assuming that sharing was one of them I would also see how that increased the user engagement since since I think we've we figured out that the experiment was run specifically to increase user engagement so I would I would look to figure out that that did the engagement increase in fact it increase because in the sharing feature I think there's an expectation that there's an assumption that a product manager would make that if Sonny shares the video would be John then you would open the app and you're in - hence increasing engagement not from not just from multiple users but as well as you engage in further with the product so I would look at the other positive impacts there starting with engagement and as well as seeing how for those for that cohort of users how that affects their retention based on this change I would also be keen on just seeing any unexpected changes [Music] yeah I would be keen on as well as seeing what was any if there was any negative impacts heard specifically with the case of if shares did spike and by the way do we have the information by what percentage the shares spiked on the overall increase was one percent one percent okay so one percent for the amount of users that YouTube has visited in the US and mobile that's a pretty large number so I would be keen on seeing how that impacted impacted overall app performance for the users all right this is a metric that I'm thinking about it as something like load time of videos and I can keep going deeper into the impact of that but yeah I'm curious to know the metrics that you would look at to decide if this increase ensuring was a positive outcome for YouTube or it was a negative outcome or maybe a neutral they don't have much of a benefit oh so what impact what metrics I would look at to determine if it was a positive right yeah I would to determine if it was positive for for YouTube as a whole I always like to go back to what is the mission of YouTube and try to figure out the specific metric that tracks whether you tube is successful with that mission and since we talked about YouTube's mission is to is to make people be heard through the content that they're creating and have the content be easily accessible for for almost anybody so I think the metric that I would specifically look at like a North Star of YouTube if you will I would look at the amount of videos watched and the amount of hours people watched videos and as so I would look at that metric the North Star metric to see if there was an increase in in the actual engagement in terms of how many videos were watched and as well as how many minutes or hours of videos were watched there was an increase there because I think that is the that is then engaged in metric a we would look at it as well as the engagement metrics that we already mentioned and in seeing if that increased I would conclude that this was a successful successful rollout okay all right well thank you for the answer so I'll kind of go or what you just explained quickly you looked at the benefit the increase in share and its potential impact on different parts of the product I think it's the right way to do it maybe one feedback I will have is like try to be more specific in terms of like what are the specific metrics that would represent those positive impacts so for example if the if the objective was to in enable increase engagement among the new active users maybe you could look at something such as number of videos watched or number of logins among the you know recently signed up user I mean look at the retention rate after 30 days see if there are any increases or reduced reductions and I would also look at the number of videos watch among the users who share content just to make sure that it's not creating any sort of a negative impact in any way that's unpredicted but overall I think the answer was really good I liked how you kind of had a very methodology call approach in narrowing it down and getting to a point of saying I think I know what the minute what caused it then we want to kind of investigate and see whether or not it had any impacts that we're not aware of and let's say we come back and yeah everything is the signs indicate the engagement among the new users was increased the number of video watch videos washed among those that receive the content did not get any negative impacts what would you do next oh well what would I do next after that so let's say if we concluded that and and by the way thank you for that feedback cuz I think there can be many metrics affected what I would do next is given that there wasn't it we did conclude that it was a positive rollout we would proceed I would work with them my cross-functional partners to to go to the next milestone to roll out to rest of the geographies and rest of the platforms and as well as since and as well as continue to validate with other geographies as well does this was specifically targeted for the new users in the US and we are continuing to measure their their engagement and as well as we're gonna measure their retention and that's another thing that I'm about continue to validate in the u.s. itself like you mentioned so rule out to other geographies and validate that this rule out is how we had expected it based on the u.s. rollout and as well as for the existing existing cohorts that we had seen the shares go up continue to validate that their retention is is as we had expected it yeah I think that's that's a good answer so basically just to quickly summarize your you're going to make sure that if you're going to turn this pilot into kind of a product feature in the long run you want to work with cross-functional partners to make sure that they can see the benefit of it if there are any concerns their address right at the beginning you want to make sure that the benefit that you're seeing in one geographical location is something that could be potentially brought in to other locations and as long as you have the right metrics with you then you can kind of measure that in wrong going basis thank you for that I think the answer was good I think the the kind of the three steps that you took into first understanding what caused it then thinking about what sort of impact it had and then deciding what to do with it in a very like kind of a thoughtful way I think it's a good answer well thank you very much again my name is B John from product management exercises comm here with sunny dule who is a product manager and he used to be an engineer before as well 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