Product Management interview question [Metrics]: What metrics would you choose for TikTok Live?

Prayansh Ratan
3 min readJun 5, 2022

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image credits — unsplash[dot]com

I have a few follow-up questions that I would like to ask -

  1. Which metrics do we track — the Product metrics or the Technical/UX metrics as well? — Both of them
  2. What is the end goal of it? Do we want to track the engagement? The reason I say that is because TikTok already has millions of DAU and at this point Engagement should be the focus for this rather than Acquisition — Yes, the Engagement metrics
  3. Do you want to include metrics for users as well or just for TikTok’s team? Example — TikTok’s DAU is not publicly available to users but users’ number of followers is — Include both

Before jumping into the answer I want to start with describing what TikTok is — TikTok is a short video sharing app where users can share 60 sec videos, like and share and comment on those videos. Once they have viewed a video they can scroll up to load the next one. TikTok’s AI recommendations suggest videos that they might like. TikTok has gained huge popularity amongst millennials and companies like YouTube and Instagram have also followed its footsteps and created Shorts and Reel respectively. Users can also go live just like Instagram and Facebook and share with their followers.

So coming to metrics -

There are two types of metrics -

  1. Engagement Metrics
  2. Technical Metrics

Engagement Metrics — These are the metrics that are used to track the engagement on the live metrics feature for users. These are the following metrics that I would track -

  1. Daily Active Users/Weekly Active Users/Monthly Active Users
  2. Average number of videos watched daily/weekly/monthly
  3. Average view time daily/weekly/monthly
  4. Average number of videos watched per user per day/per week/per month
  5. Average number of comments per video per day/month/weekly
  6. Average number of reactions per videos
  7. Total hours of live content created per day/month/year
  8. Live video retention graph
  9. Average number of shares per video
  10. Total video views per video — organic
  11. Total video views video — paid/sponsored/promoted
  12. Total video views video — autoplayed
  13. Total video views video — unique
  14. Profile visits from live videos
  15. Average follower count delta from live videos
  16. Average number of shares on videos
  17. Average revenue creators generated from live videos per month
  18. Total and Average number of abandoned sessions per user — exited live videos
  19. Total number of users who abandoned the session per video — exited live videos

Technical Metrics — These are the metrics that give us insights into TikTok’s tech, its stability and scalability. These are the following tech metrics that I would track to measure if it’s helpful for users -

  1. Average buffer time weekly/monthly
  2. Total app crashes as a result of playing live videos
  3. Average battery consumption for live videos
  4. Average internet data consumption for live videos
  5. Total app glitches like hang, no video, no sound during live videos

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