What makes a Facebook group “off the charts” active 👩🏻‍💻 Lindsay Russell, Facebook

An interview hosted by Bailey and Kevin with Lindsay Russell who led Facebook's investments in some of the platform's most active and important users: Group Power Admins. Five years into Lindsay Russell’s time at Facebook, the company made a big shift. Mark Zuckerberg announced that Facebook would have a new focus: building communities. Yet at the time, only a handful people at Facebook were focused on the platform’s biggest community-building tool: Facebook groups. According to Lindsay, groups were a “sleepy part of the business” up until that point. So when she joined the small team, they started looking at the product with renewed vigor. Lindsay’s team learned that a sliver of groups were “off the charts” active, and these successful groups had one clear commonality: a remarkable admin. We sat down with Lindsay to learn more about her experience spearheading Facebook’s big pivot towards supporting admins who were cultivating communities.