Please check your Express version. Express recently is updated to 3.0alpha which API was changed. If 3.0 you can change your code to something likes this:
var express = require('express')
, http = require('http');
var app = express();
var server = http.createServer(app);
var io = require('socket.io').listen(server);
...
server.listen(8000);
Same issue with connect: https://github.com/senchalabs/connect/issues/500#issuecomment-4620773