Product Management from Facebook to GitHub: Using data to understand users & build products

Identify Opportunities

Creating Experiences

Define Success

Who am I?

Cristina Fernández

Facebook Counsyl (genetics) GitHub

Identify Opportunities

Creating Experiences

Define Success

Identify Opportunities

Creating Experiences

Define Success

Initial Assumptions (@FB)

● Blocked users are spammers

● People should only be friending people they know

But when we dug into the data the profiles didn’t look like spammers

● Established accounts

● With 100+ of friends

● Who posted regularly

So why are the users being blocked?

Supplement data patterns with user interviews

● Wanted to explore the world - meet new people!

● Didn’t understand the “rule” about only friending people you know (cultural expectation)

● Most people liked receiving friend requests from new people

What did we do? 1. Trained algorithm on localized data 2. Changed communication around WHY people were being blocked

Results: ● Less people actually getting blocked (happy users) ● More friend requests sent & accepted (FB growth)

Data served a starting point for discovering an opportunity

Identify Opportunities

Creating Experiences

Define Success

#vanitymetrics

New Feature: Require 2fa

● User requests

● Manual workaround

● Improve security

How many Organizations can we expect to enable this?

Focus on Organizations that are already requiring 2fa

Estimation parameters

● Organizations that are actively developing code

● >10 Users

● >80% of users have 2fa enabled

Define a goal that reflects the user needs being addressed

Identify Opportunities

Creating Experiences

Define Success

Artificial Intelligence

Starting from scratch meant we needed to build all the building blocks

Develop ML and NLP algorithms

Create a production ready database

with Topic suggestions

Make Topic suggestions

accessible for users

Build in feedback mechanism to improve the

algorithm

We needed lots of different teams and skillsets

● Data Scientists (Machine Learning)

● Data Engineering (Data Infrastructure)

● Application/Front-End Engineers (user facing features)

● Design (UX)

Cross functional work allows you to bring all the pieces together

Identify Opportunities

Creating Experiences

Define Success

Q & A