Somebody oughta buy Facebook one of these.

SOASTA, a big cheese in cloud and mobile testing, has come out with mPulse.

It's supposed to be the first and only Real User Measurement (RUM) data analysis solution to deliver real-time information based on actual mobile user behavior. Naturally it's cloud-ified and the analytics are patented.

The company has also made its very first acquisition, picking up LogNormal, which, as you might suspect, does real user measurement and monitoring for mobile and web applications.

Anyway, the company says existing tools collect data about the past, not the present, and hence fail to capture the real mobile users' experience. mPulse, on the other hand, "instantly delivers actionable intelligence to operations and marketing professionals."

Google's head performance engineer Steve Souders thinks it's cool: "I've been saying for years that Real User Measurement is the best way to measure web performance. RUM tells the whole story across all browsers and locations in a way that works for both mobile and desktop users."

mPulse captures performance metrics such as bandwidth and page load time as well as engagement metrics like bounce, exit and conversion rates. Then there's mobile user metrics like user location, device type, carrier speed and application use.

The widgetry is fitted with what's supposed to be the industry's first interactive in-memory monitoring dashboard offering data visualization useful to development, operations, marketing and finance.

The guys using mPulse get a second-by-second view of real user activity broken down by continent, region, country or city. Business, development, test and operations teams can correlate the impact of performance on the bottom line, take action as needed, and feed critical information back into the development lifecycle.

SOASTA CEO Tom Lounibos says, "Technical professionals and business managers need a comprehensive solution to test, monitor and measure real user behavior to ensure customers get the most out of their app or site - whether it's mobile, on the web, or both. With mPulse, operations managers and business leaders collaborate with a common view of user behavior, empowering them to make informed decisions, pinpoint areas needing improvement and take the necessary steps to improve their web and mobile applications."

Gartner research director Thomas Murphy wades in to say: "Understanding mobile application issues will be critical to successful deployment of both B2C and B2B applications on devices. Organizations can't just leave it to testing. Real User Measurement of deployed applications will provide critical real-time data that leads to improved collaboration across teams to resolve issues faster and drive customer satisfaction."

A subset of mPulse will be free. Access to the full package, which should be out in Q1, will run about $25,000-$50,000. It was introduced this week at Velocity Europe in London.

It works on both native and hybrid mobile applications. Alerts can be customized based on whatever dimensions are critical. It claims no false positives whether it's, say, an increase in users bounce rates or falling mobile downloads. Users can see what's happening from the real mobile device through the data center and it works with different monitoring solutions.

NASA used SOASTA for the Curiosity Mars Landing to ensure its web site and applications were ready for millions of hits. Ditto the London Olympics. Other customers include Hallmark, Intuit, Microsoft and Netflix as well as six of the 10 top retailers.

SOASTA was started the month HP acquired Mercury Interactive for $4.5 billion in 2006. Mercury was the testing superstar back when client/server dominated. It hasn't changed with the time allowing start-ups like SOASTA to thrive.

See http://info.soasta.com/freerum.html.