You might be surprised to discover that even for paid products, engagement is often still the #1 metric.
Simply because people who are engaged with a product/app/whatever are by far the most likely to be repeat customers -- to renew their subscription, to buy the new version, to adopt the next product.
Once engagement drops, future revenue dries up. A drop in engagement is the canary in the coal mine -- it shows where your business is going wrong months/years before it shows up in sales stats or renewal rates.
So actually, the metric doesn't change at all. E.g. Netflix is obsessed with engagement even though it's subscription-based rather than ad-based. Because guess who winds up cancelling their subscriptions?
A user's engagement with your product is a great metric, because what you value is users using your product.
But for a COMMUNITY it's the wrong metric, because you don't value negative comments in your Slack no matter how many there are (in fact, the more there are the worse it is).
Simply because people who are engaged with a product/app/whatever are by far the most likely to be repeat customers -- to renew their subscription, to buy the new version, to adopt the next product.
Once engagement drops, future revenue dries up. A drop in engagement is the canary in the coal mine -- it shows where your business is going wrong months/years before it shows up in sales stats or renewal rates.
So actually, the metric doesn't change at all. E.g. Netflix is obsessed with engagement even though it's subscription-based rather than ad-based. Because guess who winds up cancelling their subscriptions?