One smart engineer came to you with the idea that we should show recommended Marketplace items on Newsfeed. What will you do?

I assume I am a Newsfeed PM.

I am imagining the user behavior is more horizontally to discover the product. Is that right?

Newsfeed mission

Engage people in exciting stories around the world and empower them to connect with people

Goal

As a Newsfeed PM, I would like people to engage with the content on Newsfeed and connect people with similar interests as much as I can.

Facebooks mission is primarily to build meaningful connection and I would like to have my primary goal as “#User interactions”

Why would Facebook highlight Marketplace items on Newsfeed?

I would like to understand first why FB would think about including marketplace items on newsfeed

Pros

• It helps connect buyers with sellers
• Serves as a good reminder for buyer if they have just liked or visited a product before but haven't bought it
• It helps increase time spent on Newsfeed
• Helps engage people with relevant & useful posts
• Eliminates or reduces boredom around stale posts from the similar friends

Cons

• Risk of users perceiving it as ad

Newsfeed primary priority is — Relevancy.

I don't want to show marketplace items to someone for whom it is not relevant.

I would focus on cohort who has visited Marketplace before but have not bought or connected with users

Hypothesis: If we show relevant product on newsfeed that customers have visited before, we will increase the number of interactions

Cohort: Buyers who have visited Marketplace before but have not bought or connected with sellers

Variant: Display marketplace product on newsfeed

Control: Regular feed

Primary Metric: Number of interactions

Counter metric: I want to make sure if we surface this experience, we don’t see people bailing out of newsfeed quickly because they are not seeing something interesting. To ensure that happens, I will track Daily active users on newsfeed.

Secondary metrics:

• CTR on optout (Hide post) — To evaluate sentiment of the post
• #interactions/#Recommended products on newsfeed
• #product bought/product recommended
• To ensure there is no cannibalization on other posts on Facebook newsfeed I will look at all up newsfeed interactions & time spent is neutral or up.