How does an app like tiktok track a device that is not signed up on the app, but might signup later; therefore, initially missing an accountId stored in a data warehouse? My dim_users table can only insert rows given the null accountId attached to that device machineId. I still can track the activity of this device but won’t know exactly who they’re initially.
just a martian
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Tracking guest users
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Top comments (2)
Think about it like this.
There are "sessions" where people use tiktok and from an analytics perspective when someone starts using tiktok a session is created and all their activity is tracked w/ that session.
There are also user accounts for known people to tiktok. This is not exactly the same as user/password type account and purely about what they know about people.
Lastly, there are devices. They can be identified by request headers, MAC addresses, and other things.
So the magic here is knowing that each of these 3 things can happen in any order, so how can you quickly relate one to the other. So you can probably tie a device identifier to a session every time. When that user creates an account you can relate the device and session to that account from then on. When they log in from a different device, you can remember that device and relate it again.
You can have a Machine table with (accountId, machineid) and when or after you signup send machineid make a insert in.