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I don't think that they use web socket for tracking. They use it only for showing the realtime stats.

Edit: check out the client tracking js. No web socket is used.

You are right indeed. Thanks for pointing this out.

I saw this demo'd at MongoDB conference by Gilt Groupe. Hummingbird display only supports webkit. My friend made the same thing later that night (took him maybe 1 hour total) using tracking pixel + Tornado + javascript graphing software (not canvas). The admin panel worked in IE/Firefox too b/c he used long-polling (not websockets). You can definitely roll your own to offer multi-browser support.

Yeah, but it wouldn't be as fast.

Tracking works on any browser since it serves up a single pixel for each page view. Only the front-end monitor for the graphs use WebSocket.