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Duolingo · B2C · language learning app

After a big launch, keep 1-2% of users on the old version for 3-4 months

Unknownexperimentationanalytics-attribution

What they did

For bigger features, after launch keep ~1-2% of users in control for about 3-4 months to measure long-term impact, especially for features (like social features) whose effect on DAU builds slowly via network effects. After fixing a big bug, may run a holdout that gives the bug back to ~1% of users to measure its impact. Each launched feature also gets a feature dashboard tracking engagement over time to spot novelty decay.
17:49
“So basically, after we launch an experiment, we'll keep maybe 1% or 2% of users in the control group and leave that running for like 3 or 4 months, something like that.”
Osman Mansur
22:55
“If it if it's a huge bug fix, then we will like patch it, and then maybe run a holdout experiment, like giving the bug back to like 1% of users,”
Osman Mansur
18:52
“So for every feature that we we build, we'll have a feature dashboard that tracks some of the more ad hoc metrics, feature engagement-level things that we might be interested in”
Osman Mansur

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