When you visit a website your browser speaks with the server in http. It is structured in requests and responses. You request a text, you get it. You request to upload an image, it is done. Very useful, but what if you wanted to get a live feed of things. Imagine you wanted to chat. You could send many requests always asking “is there a new message?” and always getting “no”. That’s not good, with a websocket your webbrowser and the server establish a live connection. Now they can send and receive small pieces of information. For chatting, games, auctions and many other things websockets are useful.

Here is the simple napkin sized explanation.

The WebSocket protocol is a bidirectional and stateful communications protocol , unlike normal HTTP which is unidirectional and stateless . This makes WebSocket well suited for web applications such as chat programs and online gaming.