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Mixpanel documentation lists two Javascript API's: Integration API and People Analytics. Both have an identify() method to identify users:

mixpanel.idenfity(...)
mixpanel.people.identify(...)

How are they different?

Wolfram Arnold
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2 Answers2

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This is a late answer, I know, but I've been coming across the same issue as well.

From what I can tell:

1) mixpanel.people.identify creates a new user in mixpanels dashboard (under explore) everytime it is called, even if that particular user already exists, and just overwrites their activity

2) mixpanel.identify does more of a find, and works as expected for their activity, but doesn't create a new user if it's never seen that distinct id before.

Needless to say, these two calls should do the same thing, with some kind of find_or_create on the backend, but it seems to be either a find or create, depending on which you are using.

goddamnyouryan
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    Thanks @johnnyPando, this is kind of what I've observed, too. The MixPanel display has two sections, the "explore" area is powered by the people API, the other areas by the plain JS API. – Wolfram Arnold Nov 05 '12 at 23:33
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    very confusing - im having a hard time imagining why that distinction would be useful. they offer no explanation for this, that i could find. – Aidan Feldman Dec 03 '12 at 06:03
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    people.identify in the iOS SDK was recently removed; now only the main 'identify' is present. This suggests they agreed, but there is no useful documentation of this fact AFAICT. – tooluser Aug 21 '13 at 18:19
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Though it’s related to Android, we can still understand the difference between the two versions of identify() from this doc. 

// Ensure all future events sent from
// the device will have the distinct_id 13793
mixpanel.identify("13793");

// Ensure all future people properties sent from
// the device will have the distinct_id 13793
mixpanel.getPeople().identify("13793");
cgr
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