Slides from my talk at the IEEE Conference on Visual Analytics Science and Technology (VAST) 2014 in Paris, France. ABSTRACT Logging user activities is essential to data analysis for internet products and services. Twitter has built a unified logging infrastructure that captures user activities across all clients it owns, making it one of the largest datasets in the organization. This paper describes challenges and opportunities in applying information visualization to log analysis at this massive scale, and shows how various visualization techniques can be adapted to help data scientists extract insights. In particular, we focus on two scenarios:\ (1) monitoring and exploring a large collection of log events, and (2) performing visual funnel analysis on log data with tens of thousands of event types. Two interactive visualizations were developed for these purposes: we discuss design choices and the implementation of these systems, along with case studies of how they are being used in day-to-day operations at Twitter.

1. Using visualizations
to monitor changes and harvest insights
from log data at Twitter
Krist Wongsuphasawat & Jimmy Lin
@kristw
@lintool

2. Logging user activities
& data analysis

3. Twitter Use Users

4. Use Users
Curious
Twitter
Product Managers

5. Use Users
Curious
Log data
in Hadoop Write Twitter
Instrument
Engineers
Product Managers

6. What are being logged?
activities
tweet

7. What are being logged?
activities
tweet from home timeline on twitter.com
tweet from search page on iPhone

8. What are being logged?
activities
tweet from home timeline on twitter.com
tweet from search page on iPhone
sign up
log in
retweet
etc.

9. Organize?

10. log event a.k.a. “client event”
[Lee et al. 2012]

11. log event a.k.a. “client event”
1) User ID
2) Timestamp
3) Event name
client : page : section : component : element : action
web : home : timeline : tweet_box : button : tweet
4) Event detail
[Lee et al. 2012]

12. Log data

13. Use Users
Curious
Log data
in Hadoop Twitter
Instrument
Engineers
Write
Product Managers
bigger than
Tweet data

14. Use Users
Curious
Engineers
Log data
in Hadoop
Data Scientists
Ask
Twitter
Instrument
Write
Product Managers

15. Use Users
Curious
Engineers
Log data
in Hadoop
Find
Data Scientists
Ask
Twitter
Instrument
Write
Product Managers

16. Log data

17. Use Users
Curious
Engineers
Log data
in Hadoop
Find, Clean
Data Scientists
Ask
Twitter
Instrument
Write
Product Managers

18. Use Users
Curious
Engineers
Log data
in Hadoop
Find, Clean
Data Scientists
Monitor
Ask
Twitter
Instrument
Write
Product Managers

19. Use Users
Curious
Engineers
Log data
in Hadoop
Find, Clean, Analyze
Data Scientists
Monitor
Ask
Twitter
Instrument
Write
Product Managers

20. Log data
Users in Hadoop
Find, Clean, Analyze
Data Scientists Engineers
Use
Monitor
Ask
Curious
1 2
Twitter
Instrument
Write
Product Managers

21. Part I
Find & Monitor
Client Events

22. Motivation

23. Log data
in Hadoop
Engineers & Data Scientists
billions of rows

24. Log data
in Hadoop
Aggregate
Client event collection
10,000+ event types
date client page section comp. elem. action count
20141011 web home home - - impression 100
20141011 web home wtf - - click 20
Engineers & Data Scientists

25. Log data
in Hadoop
Aggregate
Client event collection
10,000+ event types
date client page section comp. elem. action count
20141011 web home home - - impression 100
20141011 web home wtf - - click 20
(Who-to-Follow)
Engineers & Data Scientists

26. Log data
in Hadoop
Aggregate
Client event collection
Engineers & Data Scientists

27. Log data
in Hadoop
Aggregate
Client event collection
client page section component element action
Find
Search
Engineers & Data Scientists

28. Log data
in Hadoop
Aggregate
Client event collection
client page section component element action
Find
Search
Engineers & Data Scientists

29. section?
component?
element?

30. Client event collection
Search
client page section component element action
Find
Log data
in Hadoop
Aggregate
web home * * * impression
Engineers & Data Scientists

31. Client event collection
Search
Query
client page section component element action
Find
Aggregate
Return
Log data
in Hadoop
Results
web : home : home : - : - : impression
web : home : wtf : - : - : impression
web home * * * impression
Engineers & Data Scientists

32. Client event collection
Search
Query
client page section component element action
Find
Aggregate
Return
Log data
in Hadoop
Results
web : home : home : - : - : impression
web : home : wtf : - : - : impression
search can be better
Engineers & Data Scientists

33. Client event collection
Search
Query
client page section component element action
Find
Aggregate
Return
Log data
in Hadoop
Results
web : home : home : - : - : impression
web : home : wtf : - : - : impression
10,000+ event types
search can be better
Engineers & Data Scientists

34. Client event collection
10,000+ event types
What are all sections under web:home?
Search
Query
not everybody knows
client page section component element action
Find
Aggregate
Return
Log data
in Hadoop
Results
web : home : home : - : - : impression
web : home : wtf : - : - : impression
search can be better
Engineers & Data Scientists

35. Client event collection
Search
Query
client page section component element action
Find
Aggregate
Return
Log data
in Hadoop
Results
web : home : home : - : - : impression
search can be better
one graph / event
10,000+ event types
not everybody knows
What are all sections under web:home?
Engineers & Data Scientists

36. Client event collection
Search
Query
client page section component element action
Find
Aggregate
Return
Log data
in Hadoop
Results
web : home : home : - : - : impression
search can be better
one graph / event
x 10,000
10,000+ event types
not everybody knows
What are all sections under web:home?
Engineers & Data Scientists

37. !
Goals
• Search for client events
• Explore client event collection
• Monitor changes

38. • Session analysis
[Lam et al. 2007, Shen et al. 2013]
!
Related work
• Monitor network logs, not user activity logs
[Ghoniem et al. 2013]

39. Design

40. Client event collection
Engineers & Data Scientists

41. Client event collection
See
Engineers & Data Scientists

42. narrow down
See
Interactions
search box => filter
Client event collection
Engineers & Data Scientists

43. See
How to visualize?
narrow down
Client event collection
Engineers & Data Scientists
Interactions
search box => filter

44. Interactions client : page : section : component : element : action
search box => filter
See
How to visualize?
narrow down
Client event collection
Engineers & Data Scientists

45. Client event hierarchy
iphone:home:-:-:-:impression
iphone:home:-:tweet:tweet:click
iphone home -
- - impression
tweet tweet click

46. Detect changes
iphone home -
- - impression
tweet tweet click
iphone home -
- - impression
tweet tweet click
TODAY
7 DAYS AGO
compared to

47. Calculate changes
+5% +5% +5%
+10% +10% +10%
-5% -5% -5%
DIFF

48. Display changes
iphone home -
- - impression
tweet tweet click
Map of the Market [Wattenberg 1999], StemView [Guerra-Gomez et al. 2013]

49. Display changes
home -
- - impression
tweet tweet click
iphone

50. Demo
Scribe Radar

51. Twitter for Banana

53. • Since Dec 2013
• 500 unique users, 10 users / day
!
• No training
Deployment

54. Use cases
Users: PMs, Data Scientists, Engineers
• Search
• Monitor
• See effects after major product launch
read the paper :)

55. Part II
Analysis

56. Count page visits
home page
banana : home : - : - : - : impression

57. Funnel
home page
profile page

58. Funnel analysis
banana : home : - : - : - : impression
banana : profile : - : - : - : impression
home page 1 job
profile page
1 hour

59. Funnel analysis
home page
banana : home : - : - : - : impression
profile page search page
2 jobs
2 hours
banana : profile : - : - : - : impression banana : search : - : - : - : impression

60. Funnel analysis
home page
banana : home : - : - : - : impression
profile page search page
banana : profile : - : - : - : impression banana : search : - : - : - : impression
Specify all funnels manually!
n jobs
n hours

61. Goal
home page
banana : home : - : - : - : impression
… … …
1 job => all funnels, visualized

62. • Visualize an overview of event sequences
!
Related work
[Wongsuphasawat et al. 2011, Monroe et al. 2013, …]

63. Related work
• Visualize an overview of event sequences
[Wongsuphasawat et al. 2011, Monroe et al. 2013, …]
!
• Big data? eBay checkout sequences
[Shen et al. 2013]
!
One funnel at a time
Checkout > Payment > Confirm > Success

64. LifeFlow
[CHI2011]
!
(simplified)

65. User sessions
Session#1
start
A
B
end
Session#4
start
A
end
Session#2
start
A
B
end
Session#3
start
A
C
end

66. Aggregate
4 sessions
A
start
A A
B B C
end end end
A
end

67. Aggregate
start
A
B B C
end end end
end
4 sessions

68. Aggregate
C
start
end end end
end
A
B
4 sessions

69. Aggregate
C
start
end end end
end
A
B
4 sessions

70. Aggregate
4 sessions
B C
end
start
A
end end end

71. Aggregate
4 sessions
B C
end
start
A
end end

72. Aggregate
4 sessions
B C
end
start
A
end end

73. Aggregate
4 sessions
start
A
B C end
end end

74. Aggregate
4,000,000 sessions
start
A
B C end
end end

75. try with sample data
(~millions sessions, 10,000+ event types)
!
original paper
(100,000 sessions, ~10 event types)

76. not meaningful
!
small slice of data
but huge file

77. How to make it work?

78. # of unique sequences

79. Reduce # of unique sequences
1. Reduce event types

80. Reduce # of unique sequences
1. Reduce event types
10,000 types select
tweet
sign up
log out

81. Reduce # of unique sequences
1. Reduce event types
10,000 types select
tweet
sign up
log out

82. Reduce # of unique sequences
1. Reduce event types
10,000 types select merge
tweet from home timeline
tweet from search page
tweet …
= tweet

83. Reduce # of unique sequences
1. Reduce event types
2. Reduce sequence length

84. Reduce # of unique sequences
1. Reduce event types
2. Reduce sequence length
session
1000 events

85. Reduce # of unique sequences
1. Reduce event types
2. Reduce sequence length
session
10 events after (window size & direction)
1000 events
visit home page (alignment)

86. Reduce # of unique sequences
1. Reduce event types
2. Reduce sequence length
} Ask users for input

87. Reduce # of unique sequences
} Ask users for input
1. Reduce event types
2. Reduce sequence length
3. More aggregation on Hadoop

88. Collapse events
Sequence
ABBBCCCC
ABBCC
ABC
ABCCCC
e.g.
ABCD
ABCCCD
ABCCE
ABCDF
ABCDG
ABCDH
tweet, tweet, tweet, … = tweet

89. Collapse events
Sequence
ABC
ABC
ABC
ABC
ABCD
ABCD
ABCE
ABCDF
ABCDG
ABCDH

90. Group & Count
Sequence
Count
ABC
2000
ABCD
80
ABCE
20
ABCDF
1
ABCDG
1
ABCDH
1
…
…

91. Group & Count
Sequence
Count
ABC
2000
ABCD
80
ABCE
20
ABCDF
1
ABCDG
1
ABCDH
1
ABCDI
1
ABCDJK
1
ABCDJL
1
rare sequences
(count < threshold)

92. Truncate
Sequence
ABC
ABCD
ABCE
ABCDx
ABCDx
ABCDx
ABCDx
ABCDJx
ABCDJx
Count
2000
80
20
1
1
1
1
1
1
Replace last event with x (…)

93. Group & Count
Sequence
ABC
ABCD
ABCE
ABCDx
ABCDJx
Count
2000
80
20
4
2

94. Truncate more
Sequence
ABC
ABCD
ABCE
ABCDx
ABCDx
Count
2000
80
20
4
2

95. Group & Count
Sequence
Count
ABC
2000
ABCD
80
ABCE
20
ABCDx
6

96. Final process
1. Define set of events
2. Pick alignment, direction and window size
3. Run Hadoop job (with more aggregation)
4. Wait for it… (2+ hrs)
5. Visualize
gazillion patterns (TBs)
~100,000 patterns (10MB)

97. Demo
Flying Sessions

98. Deployment
• Since Jan 2013
• Fewer users, but more in-depth ad-hoc analysis
• Initial meeting to provide support

99. Case studies
• What did users do when they visit Twitter? (in demo)
• Where did users give up in the sign up process?
• more in the paper

100. Case studies
click on “sign up”
fill personal info
import address book
etc.
• What did users do when they visit Twitter? (in demo)
• Where did users give up in the sign up process?
• more in the paper

101. Case studies
• What did users do when they visit Twitter? (in demo)
• Where did users give up in the sign up process?
• more in the paper
read the paper :)

102. Conclusions & Future work
• Large-scale User Activity Logs + Visual Analytics

103. Conclusions & Future work
• Large-scale User Activity Logs + Visual Analytics
• Find, Monitor & Explore
+ Anomaly detection & automatic alert
• Funnel Analysis
+ More interactivity & data / reduce wait time / latency study?
• Used in day-to-day operations at Twitter

104. Conclusions & Future work
Challenge
big data
small data
visualize & interact
• Large-scale User Activity Logs + Visual Analytics
• Find, Monitor & Explore
+ Anomaly detection & automatic alert
• Funnel Analysis
+ More interactivity & data / reduce wait time / latency study?
• Used in day-to-day operations at Twitter
aggregate
& sacrifice

105. Conclusions & Future work
• Large-scale User Activity Logs + Visual Analytics
• Find, Monitor & Explore
+ Anomaly detection & automatic alert
• Funnel Analysis
+ More interactivity & data / reduce wait time / latency study?
• Used in day-to-day operations at Twitter
• Generalize to smaller systems
Challenge
big data
aggregate
& sacrifice
small data
visualize & interact

106. Acknowledgement
• Data Scientists & Engineers @Twitter — Linus Lee, Chuang Liu
• Feedback from reviewers, Ben Shneiderman & Catherine Plaisant

107. Conclusions & Future work
• Large-scale User Activity Logs + Visual Analytics
• Find, Monitor & Explore
+ Anomaly detection & automatic alert
• Funnel Analysis
+ More interactivity & data / reduce wait time / latency study?
• Used in day-to-day operations at Twitter
• Generalize to smaller systems
Challenge
big data
aggregate
& sacrifice
small data
visualize & interact
kristw@twitter.com / @kristw

108. Questions?

109. Thank you