New Insight: Bio Updates

[adampash]

One-liner

Which of your friends have changed their profile's bio information, and how.

Full explainer

When something big happens in our lives, we update our bios to reflect those changes but don't necessarily broadcast the news on its own — or sometimes even if we broadcast, we update the bio first. This insight gives the user x-ray vision into the changes in their friends' Twitter bios. It should make the user feel better aware of their friends' quieter updates, allowing the user to feel better connected with her friends — and hopefully even facilitating real conversation.

Audience for the insight

This insight could work on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram, though to start, I think we should focus on Twitter. It serves users of all activity levels.

How often this insight runs

• [x] Always (triggered by a data event, check the data and update insight on every crawl)
• [ ] Daily (check the data once a day, don't regenerate every crawl)
• [ ] Weekly on a fixed day (specify day of week per network to space these out)
• [ ] Monthly on a fixed day with bonus magic day within first 2 weeks of use (specify day of month per network to space these out)
• [ ] Annual on a fixed date (specify day of year)
• [ ] Annual every 365 days from first appearance

  Headline

Update 8/15 with new headlines in the vein of the new subject lines

Regardless of # of users w/changed bios; instead just select one user from the list.

• Something's different about %user1
• %user1 has a new look [maybe this only makes sense for avatar changes?]
• %user1 changes it up
• %user1 makes an adjustment
• %user1 tries something new
• What's new with %user1

/update

So, as discussed previously, headlines for this could either skew more brand-y or more user/friend directed. Below, I've done a little of both, separated by whether the %total # of changed users is 1 or not, but we could obviously randomly select 1 user to highlight from several if we wanted. (I'm putting out a lot as a starting point and for the sake of having things to discuss.)

if %total = 1

• What's new with %user1?
• Something's different about %user1.
• What's changed about %user1?
• Something's happening with %user1.
• Did anyone notice what's different about %user1?

else

• Hi Profile Changes!
• Changing of the Bio.
• Auto Biography.
• Ch-ch-ch-ch-changes!
• Bio(nic) Vision.
• Mapping the Twitter Bio-me.

  Body

if %total == 1

• %user1 has a new Twitter bio:

else

• %total of %username's friends changed their Twitter bios.

Let's also try try randomly appending some addt'l text along the lines of:

• Spot the difference?
• Even small changes can be big news.
• %they_or_other_user might appreciate that someone noticed. ("They might appreciate" if multiple users; otherwise "%user might appreciate")
• ""

After all that comes the bio diffs.

Criteria and logic

• What data does this insight need?

This insight needs to check the user's friends (people she follows) for bio updates during the previous day. If any bios have changed, they should be added to the insight.

• Is there a minimum threshold for any bit of data before the insight should get generated?

At least 1 friend must have updated her bio.

Included elements

• [x] Headline
• [x] Text
• [ ] Header image (image off to the left in side-by-side style insights)
• [ ] Hero image (giant image on top)
• [ ] List of user(s)
• [ ] List of post(s)
• [ ] List of link(s)
• [ ] Action button (please specify button label and URL button should link to)
• [ ] Line chart
• [ ] Bar chart
• [x] Other viz - Initial prototype: http://files.adampash.com/sketch/autobiography/
• [ ] Other graphic treatment

Should include a diff of the user's bio comparing text before and after.

Priority

• [ ] High
• [x] Medium
• [ ] Low

Regarding email subject lines, we could use the existing headlines (where %total == 1) along with others like:

• %user1, %user2, and %user3 updated their bios.
• %user1's new bio includes %proper_word.

  Technical implementation

Notes (from @ginatrapani) on how the backend architecture for this insight might work.

• Make a tu_user_versions table with these fields: id (auto-increment), user_key (foreign key to tu_users.id), field_name (varchar, initial value will be "description" - which is the field in tu_users we store bio info in), field_value (the contents of the description), and crawl_time (timestamp of when the crawler picked up this version of the description).
• When UserDAO::updateUser is called, it pulls the latest version of description stored in tu_user_versions. If it differs from the version it's about to save to the tu_users table, it inserts a new record into tu_user_versions.
• The insight pulls all the tu_user_versions stored within a certain timeframe, joining user_key to followee_id in tu_follows. If the field-in-question (bio) has changed, pass the current description and the old version, to the insight template. If there is more than one new version from today, compare the version from any past day to the latest update today.

This insight will run daily and will regenerate on every crawl, so that means any time it shows up, it will display today's latest bio diffed against any OTHER day's latest bio, without displaying changes in between.

Say I change my bio on July 20th, and then do 3 edits on August 1st at 10am, 11am, and 1pm. Even if the crawler picks up all three August 1st edits, the insight will display the July 20th-created version diffed against the 1pm August 1st version.

Email template

This insight should also include an email-friendly template which doesn't use Javascript to display the diff. @capndesign will work on this presentation. One way to do this might be using a Smarty plugin like this one: http://www.omnimint.com/A1/PHP/Smarty-inline-diff-modifier.html

[adampash]

@anildash If you have a chance, it'd be great to get some early copy feedback/thoughts on this one. I've included more-than-normal amount of options — not all great, but I figure better to start with a few options that we can edit down from.

[ginatrapani]

@cdmoyer is beginning work on our versioning backend to support this insight this week.

[ginatrapani]

Copy feedback: all of the one-person-changed-something headlines look good. A more common case will be multiple people changed theirs, and I like some but not all of the suggestions. Here's my suggested list:

• Changing of the Bio.
• Ch-ch-ch-ch-changes!
• Bio(nic) vision...
• Change is afoot. (this is a new candidate)

As for the line of additional text, I like both suggestions but I think we should cut them down to as few words as possible, b/c this is a wordy insight. My 2 edits:

• Bet they'd appreciate that someone noticed.
• Any big news here?

[adampash]

All sounds good to me. I still have a thing for Auto Biography, but not enough to really go to the mat for it.

[ginatrapani]

Second thought: Auto Biography is clever, and I'm not strongly against it, though I might be recalling that @anildash was. I'm open to bringing it back in, if @anildash likes it.

[anildash]

@ginatrapani @adampash I think "Auto Biography" is a poor choice because it only makes sense to us, and requires the user to understand we mean it in the opposite sense of its literal meaning. Gonna nix that one.

For the insight body text, we need to be really careful to address that the change might reflect something negative (lost a job, etc.). So I'd refine the two (great!) suggestions to something more like:

• They might appreciate that someone noticed.
• Even small changes can be big news.

I think "Bio(nic) vision..." is a little clunky, but if you all feel strongly, then leave it in contention. I like "Change is afoot." Let's keep in mind, not everybody calls these "bios" -- they're also "about" or "description" or my "profile". Might also suggest:

• Spot the difference?
• Updated profiles [I know that's utilitarian, but not bad if it's just one in the mix]
• What's new about these %friends?

[adampash]

So, I don't know if we want to go ahead with the original headlines or move toward headlines that align more closely with the subject line tweaks. I added some suggestions along those lines a few minutes ago, but I may have been too late. Here they were:

Regardless of # of users w/changed bios; instead just select one user from the list.

• Something's different about %user1
• %user1 has a new look [maybe this only makes sense for avatar changes?]
• %user1 changes it up
• %user1 makes an adjustment
• %user1 tries something new
• What's new with %user1

@anildash @ginatrapani What do you think?

[anildash]

No, we are still fine to make those changes. And then we can keep the body text the same to offer a bit more context/explanation. I think that means we're ready to go to dev for the insight itself.