I have been working in a prototype using the Twitter Streaming API with Socket.io and ReactJS for the frontend, Node.js in the backend, cool stuff!
I used several articles as a reference, the one using the streaming API using socket.io(but AngularJS and ntwitter npm package), real-time django using node.js and socket.io or a modern python stack for a real time web application.
In the end as I said I used nodejs, the twit package and socket.io in the backend. With all these tools was incredibly easy to have something running fast.
And these are the different parts composing the example, the installation of the different tools is beyond the scope of this article just because I want to focus more in functionality and I don't want the article to be very long.
Anyway if you have a question/criticism here I am. :-)
More ReactJS Intro: http://javaguirre.net/2014/02/09/reactjs-by-example/