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> When a company starts playing weird games with how it reports user activity, something is going very, very wrong. In general, when a company starts trying to
by personjerry 2y ago
> When a company starts playing weird games with how it reports user activity, something is going very, very wrong. In general, when a company starts trying to obfuscate the true numbers about its revenue, growth, or profit, it’s a bad sign.
Citation needed. When companies shift from Monthly to Daily active users for example it's a perfectly valid way to recognize that they want to change the way they think about their north star metrics. At Facebook scale, I think it's rather brave for them to change the most important metrics that they report, showing that they're still open-minded to innovate on that frontier (and they are most certainly on that frontier as few companies operate on that scale). Having worked there in the past I would believe that this isn't just a vanity change, most likely a fundamental change on how their teams will be viewing these metrics and objectives, and may lead to material differences, likely for the better.
- unregistereddev 2y agoPardon the glib reply, but if this is what Facebook considers "innovation" then I'm with the author of TFA. How does switching to a more obfuscated metric result in a better product or improved user experience?
- personjerry 2y agoHaving the right metrics is very important in product development. Your team will improve the things you measure. Daily active people is the de facto north star metric for a lot of companies, and to move forwards and adjust their definition is interesting. "Obfuscated" is a judgment we're making. I'm assuming internally it's very well-defined. Perhaps they need to better define it outwardly. I am giving them the benefit of the doubt and if they are indeed doing it as obfuscation, I agree it's not good.