❗Let's close the gap: We still need your help to raise $40,000 by April 1. Donate now

Does a big user base mean big success?

Aparna Alluri and Ben Johnson Jan 13, 2015
HTML EMBED:
COPY

Does a big user base mean big success?

Aparna Alluri and Ben Johnson Jan 13, 2015
HTML EMBED:
COPY

The other day Evan Williams a former CEO of Twitter and now the head of Medium, posted a rant on Medium, the publishing platform he helped create. It caught our eye because it touched on a hot topic: Monthly Active Users. That’s the number of people who interact with your service or your platform at least once a month.

If you’re a social media company in 2015, especially one that has gone or is going public, there’s a good chance you’re talking a lot about monthly active users. This number is used to measure the success of companies like Twitter or Buzzfeed. But Williams doesn’t think that’s the only metric for success. 

What kicked off his rant in the first place was a question about whether Instagram is bigger than Twitter because it has more users. But what exactly does bigger mean? Williams says it’s frustrating that so many people measure the success of consumer internet services  news, social media etc  solely by number of users. Twitter’s CEO Dick Costolo is facing investor criticism right now because the social network isn’t seen to be gaining new monthly active users fast enough.

Williams says that single number  the number of people who visit or use a site at least once a month  isn’t a fair metric. For one, it doesn’t tell you how many people spent less than a minute on the site, and how many stayed longer. “What value are you measuring, either to the people or to the company?” he says.

Williams thinks time is “one of the other dimensions worth paying attention to,” but it’s an imperfect way to measure a site’s impact on people.

“The ultimate metric is probably not traceable,” he said. But for now, he’s interested in defining what bigger means.

 

There’s a lot happening in the world.  Through it all, Marketplace is here for you. 

You rely on Marketplace to break down the world’s events and tell you how it affects you in a fact-based, approachable way. We rely on your financial support to keep making that possible. 

Your donation today powers the independent journalism that you rely on. For just $5/month, you can help sustain Marketplace so we can keep reporting on the things that matter to you.