Mixpanel: What's the difference bewteen identify() and people.identify()?

Question

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?

Answer 1

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.