Profile Update

A profile update is an operation that sets or changes a user-profile attribute over time — for instance a plan changing from free to paid.

In product-analytics tools, a user profile is a set of attributes written and updated by calls such as identify. A profile update looks simple but hides a decision: is the previous value overwritten or is its history kept. Most tools keep only the current value, so when a user's plan goes from free to paid the old record is erased and you can no longer ask 'how long was this user free at the moment of purchase'. That very difference between overwriting and keeping versions is the line between a plain profile and lifecycle analysis. Another point is the direction of trust: a profile filled from user-declared data can be stale or wrong, and updating it carelessly makes the data dirtier, not cleaner.