3 ms·

Mixpanel Streams: Watch What Your Users Are Doing On Your Site, In Real Time

58 points by suhail 15y ago

wccrawford 15y ago
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.
- brown9-2 15y ago
  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.
- T-hawk 15y ago
  On the other hand, have you ever had the experience of nosing around a website and not being able to find something you're looking for? Wouldn't it be nice for someone to be walking along with you on bestbuy.com, see your struggles, and figure out that the link for "Reserve for Local Store Pickup" needs to be much more prominent, greatly improving your experience next time?
foobar2k 15y ago
great way to see typical user behavior!
prosa 15y ago
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.
- bxr 15y ago
  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.
phil 15y ago
Hey, what are those other two icons in the screenshot? (in the left side nav). They aren't in my account!
- suhail 15y ago
  You'll just have to wait and see ;)
- trefn 15y ago
  oops =) coming soon...
sudonim 15y ago
Streams seems really similar to this project I saw a couple of weeks ago. http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2560151 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2560151
jonnytran 15y ago
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.
- raylu 15y ago
  Yes, you can export your data: http://mixpanel.com/api/docs/guides/api/v2 http://mixpanel.com/api/docs/guides/api/v2
Urgo 15y ago
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 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 http://reinvigorate.net looks cool too, also mentioned in article. Will have to try it out as well.

58 points by suhail 15y ago

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.

brown9-2 15y ago
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.
T-hawk 15y ago
On the other hand, have you ever had the experience of nosing around a website and not being able to find something you're looking for? Wouldn't it be nice for someone to be walking along with you on bestbuy.com, see your struggles, and figure out that the link for "Reserve for Local Store Pickup" needs to be much more prominent, greatly improving your experience next time?

foobar2k 15y ago

great way to see typical user behavior!

prosa 15y ago

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.

bxr 15y ago
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.

phil 15y ago

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

suhail 15y ago
You'll just have to wait and see ;)
trefn 15y ago
oops =) coming soon...

sudonim 15y ago

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

jonnytran 15y ago

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.

raylu 15y ago
Yes, you can export your data: http://mixpanel.com/api/docs/guides/api/v2 http://mixpanel.com/api/docs/guides/api/v2

Urgo 15y ago

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