I'm trying to figure out why people think real-time data is important. Data needs to be actionable, and I'm not sure real-time page view data is that.

What conclusions can be made from that dashboard, except "we have N visitors right now"? And what actions can you take from that data to increase the number of page views?

At the moment there isn't much value except for it looking nice. However, once I implement referrers properly, it's good to see where traffic is coming from. When it comes from a discussion you are still not too late to act.

Also, having an API call that returns the trending content of the site can be used on the site itself.

If you're running on cloud, one thing is to understand the need of real-time server bandwidth increases/decreases.

On the marketing & customer development side, it might help you participate in discussions regarding your site happening elsewhere.

Sure, but then the data is actionable: the bandwidth goes up, you increase the number of instances in your cloud. Or calls the bank for more money.

Just curious: why are you using MongoDB with ActiveRecord and not say MongoMapper or Mongoid?

I like the stability of ActiveRecord. It was also to show that it's very easy to use the Ruby MongoDB driver just for some data. I have thought about changing it in the future to use only MongoDB, but not just yet.