Data and Analytics for Niche Social Media

A social media startup had released an app and the user base had been growing steadily. While the growth was encouraging, management knew the app needed improvement, and the volume of user activity was becoming too much for engineering to effectively report on. Extrasensory¹ was engaged to help management understand user behavior on an ongoing basis with a view to honing product-market fit and eventually handing the data and analytics function over to future hires.

Motivation

A surge in user growth had created excitement among management and investors and a sense of momentum in the users of the social app. An increasing volume of activity, network effects, and new use profiles compounded to push the complexity of the data to new heights. An ambitious product roadmap was certain to add to that complexity, and engineering had their hands full implementing it. From day-to-day activity and developing trends to strategic decisions about product direction, management needed support in decision making and awareness.

Approach

Extrasensory began with an interview of executives in charge of product, marketing, and finance to understand the current state and strategic direction of the business. This enabled us to develop and propose a vision for a data and analytics function intended to meet immediate needs and scale for years to come as follows:

• Instrumentation of the application to ensure all essential information was being collected.
• Minimization of impact on engineering through definition of a minimal contract that never changed.
• Aggregation with ETL of all data in a cloud data warehouse selected for development velocity.
• Construction of dashboards covering at-a-glance metrics important for finance, growth, user behavior, feature performance, and ad campaigns.
• Development of new metrics as the product roadmap is filled in and features are added.
• Establishment of an extensibility framework for rapid iteration of the above.

Results

Extrasensory adopted a rapid prototyping development style, presenting prototypes of timeseries and key metrics within days. This allowed feedback on design and business logic to to infuse the development process from the start. Over time, the engagement settled into a short sprint cadence, and an at-a-glance dashboard suite was fleshed out and refined.

With a clear picture of where they were, leaders were now ready to think about where they were going. Strategic decisions take the form of hypotheses or "what if?" scenarios. While no one can see the future with perfect clarity, Extrasensory was able to enhance future vision with a comprehensive data warehouse at their disposal. As decisions were made, hypotheticals became actuals, and exploratory studies became key metrics integrated into dashboards.

Critically, this approach allowed the client to reap the benefits of an in-house data and analytics team without needing to hire. In time, with a working data and analytics function, they would be set up to hire for the right roles, and Extrasensory would ensure a smooth handover.