General-Purpose User Modeling with Behavioral Logs: A Snapchat Case Study

Fuente: arXiv
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Main Authors: Fang, Qixiang, Zhou, Zhihan, Barbieri, Francesco, Liu, Yozen, Neves, Leonardo, Nguyen, Dong, Oberski, Daniel L., Bos, Maarten W., Dotsch, Ron
Format: Preprint
Published: 2023
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author Fang, Qixiang
Zhou, Zhihan
Barbieri, Francesco
Liu, Yozen
Neves, Leonardo
Nguyen, Dong
Oberski, Daniel L.
Bos, Maarten W.
Dotsch, Ron
author_facet Fang, Qixiang
Zhou, Zhihan
Barbieri, Francesco
Liu, Yozen
Neves, Leonardo
Nguyen, Dong
Oberski, Daniel L.
Bos, Maarten W.
Dotsch, Ron
contents Learning general-purpose user representations based on user behavioral logs is an increasingly popular user modeling approach. It benefits from easily available, privacy-friendly yet expressive data, and does not require extensive re-tuning of the upstream user model for different downstream tasks. While this approach has shown promise in search engines and e-commerce applications, its fit for instant messaging platforms, a cornerstone of modern digital communication, remains largely uncharted. We explore this research gap using Snapchat data as a case study. Specifically, we implement a Transformer-based user model with customized training objectives and show that the model can produce high-quality user representations across a broad range of evaluation tasks, among which we introduce three new downstream tasks that concern pivotal topics in user research: user safety, engagement and churn. We also tackle the challenge of efficient extrapolation of long sequences at inference time, by applying a novel positional encoding method.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2312_12111
institution arXiv
publishDate 2023
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle General-Purpose User Modeling with Behavioral Logs: A Snapchat Case Study
Fang, Qixiang
Zhou, Zhihan
Barbieri, Francesco
Liu, Yozen
Neves, Leonardo
Nguyen, Dong
Oberski, Daniel L.
Bos, Maarten W.
Dotsch, Ron
Human-Computer Interaction
Information Retrieval
Learning general-purpose user representations based on user behavioral logs is an increasingly popular user modeling approach. It benefits from easily available, privacy-friendly yet expressive data, and does not require extensive re-tuning of the upstream user model for different downstream tasks. While this approach has shown promise in search engines and e-commerce applications, its fit for instant messaging platforms, a cornerstone of modern digital communication, remains largely uncharted. We explore this research gap using Snapchat data as a case study. Specifically, we implement a Transformer-based user model with customized training objectives and show that the model can produce high-quality user representations across a broad range of evaluation tasks, among which we introduce three new downstream tasks that concern pivotal topics in user research: user safety, engagement and churn. We also tackle the challenge of efficient extrapolation of long sequences at inference time, by applying a novel positional encoding method.
title General-Purpose User Modeling with Behavioral Logs: A Snapchat Case Study
topic Human-Computer Interaction
Information Retrieval
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2312.12111