The Amit Kumar Problem
Inspired by on Lenny's Podcast
Your kid says 'my friend did it.' Great. Which of the seventeen people they call 'my friend'?
At Facebook, Bangaly discovered that in India, their 'find friends' feature was basically useless. The most common name was Amit Kumar - with 250,000 real users. Imagine trying to find YOUR Amit Kumar among 5,000 possibilities. The profile pages showed Western identifiers like job titles and schools, but many users' friends sold jeans at markets. None of it helped.
Parenting has the same problem. When your toddler reports that 'my friend hit me' or 'my friend shared their snack,' you're dealing with your own Amit Kumar situation. They have seventeen friends. Which one? The tall one? The one from Tuesday? The one with the dinosaur shirt?
The solution at Facebook was to go deep - travel to India, sit in people's homes, watch them actually try to find friends. In parenting, you do the same: observe, ask follow-up questions, learn their world. 'The one who likes trucks' gets you further than 'which friend?'
Context always requires investigation. The data alone never tells the full story.
PM Theme: User research / understanding context
Parenting Theme: Understanding your child's social world
“Listen, this guy's named Amit Kumar. I have 10 friends named Amit Kumar. What is this page going to tell me?”Bangaly Kaba · 01:28:24
“We looked at, and the top 10 common names are Indian names. And the most common name was Amit Kumar. And there was like 250,000 people a month who used Amit Kumar who were real people.”Bangaly Kaba · 01:29:12
