I understand you get a better feeling off it, but I'd love to hear from people who have noticed something using real-time analytics they wouldn't have seen from plain old analytics.

I'm not sceptical, just curious as I think it can easily turn into a great way to waste time...

Hey Tom, it's not my testimonial, but that of a close friend. This person runs a pretty successful, non-tech, blog. He uses Clicky real-time analytics, and explained to me that he uses it in real-time to either push content (via social media) or hang on to it in order to get a steady number of monthly visitors. Example, if he gets 25,000 page views during half a day, and only "needs" 30,000 a day to be on target with his estimates/budget he won't tweet/fb, or publish a post, etc. On the other hand, if he sees mid-day numbers are down, he will push content in order to reach to the desired number. From his experience, real-time analytics is worth it and works.

I'm certain this no so much the case with non-publishers or page view driven businesses.