The best action to define an active user is one that indicates genuine engagement with your product, filtering out superficial interactions.

In advertising-based business models, having millions of active users is essential before brands will buy ads, making active users a reasonable proxy for revenue.

If your startup has strong network effects, focusing on active users may be more important initially, with revenue becoming a focus later on. It's crucial to define what 'users' means for your startup, as it can vary significantly. For example, having 100 users could mean they just signed up or that they actively engage with your product daily for about 10 minutes. The latter is a much more valuable metric.

AI applications are showing improved engagement, with daily to monthly active user ratios for AI apps like ChatGPT climbing significantly, indicating that more users are finding value in AI.

The main activity metric for Cursor is the number of paid power users who use the AI tool regularly, which is essential for sustainability.

Product metrics for AI should focus on the depth of engagement rather than just frequency, as meaningful interactions may not always show up in traditional metrics.

Meta AI currently has about a billion monthly active users across its applications, and the company continues to set ambitious goals for AI usage.

Tracking the ratio of users who engage with your product after visiting your page can provide insights into its usability.

While revenue is often the best primary metric, some startups may focus on active users, especially if building a large audience is a prerequisite for monetization.