

Mixpanel Streams: Watch What Your Users Are Doing On Your Site, In Real Time - suhail
http://techcrunch.com/2011/06/14/mixpanel-streams-watch-what-your-users-are-doing-on-your-site-in-real-time/

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jonnytran
It's funny to see this b/c I've been a user of Mixpanel almost from the
beginning and built my own stream. I honestly don't know if they allow this
now, but back then you couldn't export your data. So as a believer in making
data-driven decisions, it simply made sense to save off every single Mixpanel
event before sending it over to them.

Customers would call on the phone saying I'm looking at X, and it was kind of
hard to figure out exactly where they were on the site by their verbal
description. Where they'd come from (if they were referred from Google
AdWords, they might have different expectations than from somewhere else).
We'd have to awkwardly ask callers for the product ID number, or stuff like
that.

To help with customer service, I built a real-time AJAX stream of all our
Mixpanel events. (Which was easy since we were saving them anyway.) I found
this to be essential for customer service and learning about our users in
general. Sure it may seem creepy when you first learn about this, but
honestly, what developer doesn't tail their server logs just for fun? With the
right intention, it can be a seamless way to be extremely helpful to users.
With a real-time stream, you're just suddenly more helpful to people who need
it.

By anecdotal evidence, we have found that letting people know you were
following them is not a good idea, b/c you may cause them to feel creeped out.
But the truth is, it's more likely than not that this is already happening (to
you, right now, on this very site). We would never deny it, but we tend to
just not bring it up / volunteer the fact. A real-time stream just gives
visibility into the data that's always been there.

What was great about having our own stream was that we can pull in any user
account data that's helpful. In other words, once a user logs in, you can
display any relevant user account info in the stream. How long has a user been
shopping? How many products has he/she looked at? Is he/she a return user? Has
he purchased before? You can essentially link your real-time stream with your
customer relationship management, aka CRM. If you choose, you can reach out to
them in real-time on the site, either triggering an event on their next page
load, or popping up something like one of those embedded chats.

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raylu
Yes, you can export your data: <http://mixpanel.com/api/docs/guides/api/v2>

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sudonim
Streams seems really similar to this project I saw a couple of weeks ago.
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2560151>

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prosa
Real-time clickstreams are one of Clicky's most popular features. This is
definitely an attempt to win over customers that might otherwise choose the
competition.

As far as the creepiness goes... unless you think request logging should be
totally disabled, anyone can simply tail their web server's logfile to see
real time click data. How is it more of a privacy violation, just because it's
easier to read? In fact, the anonymization Mixpanel is doing does _more_ to
protect privacy than a simple tail would do.

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bxr
I _could_ trudge around in my databases to read direct user to user messages.
Should I? Should I sell a tool to facilitate doing so?

edit: re: downvotes, Yes I was using argumentum ad absurdum, but I was trying
to show that just because you have data doesn't mean analysis of it isn't
intrusive.

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Urgo
I'm a huge fan of real time analytics so gave Mixpanel a shot just now and
after playing around with it for a few minutes removed it from the site right
away. I really didn't like the color scheme to start with but it just didn't
feel very useful. It just showed a bunch of users with colors as their names
rather then giving totals or anything like that.

I use <http://woopra.com> quite often but give them too much money (keep
running over in pageviews and its getting expensive) and was looking for an
alternative but this just doesn't feel right for me. Currently trying the
other one they mentioned in the article chartbeat and though I'm not sure I
like it better then woorpa yet it does seem more useful.

Update: I'm going to still keep using chartbeat until my free trial runs out I
think but it seems like Woorpa = chartbeat + mixpanel + more just based on a
quick 5 minute use of both chartbeat & mixpanel.

Update2: <http://reinvigorate.net> looks cool too, also mentioned in article.
Will have to try it out as well.

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wccrawford
That's not creepy at all.

Edit: Everyone should stop for a moment and think about how they'd feel if
they knew someone was watching their every move on a website, even if that
person worked for the website. Even anonymized, I don't like it. I would
probably avoid any website that I knew used that tech.

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brown9-2
Stop to consider how much data about how you use their site is already
available to the operators of the sites you visit, I think this is only a
small extension of that.

Heck with mobile apps, some sites/apps can even see where you are using them
from.

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phil
Hey, what are those other two icons in the screenshot? (in the left side nav).
They aren't in my account!

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suhail
You'll just have to wait and see ;)

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foobar2k
great way to see typical user behavior!

