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Facebook has been busy making acquisitions again and the latest big purchase is a website called The Find.
Never heard of it? Don’t worry – you’re probably not alone given that the site doesn’t have an enormous presence outside the US.
The Find is a shopping search engine that enables users to search for items, eg “white trainers” and see a list of search results sourced from different retailers. Those who are hooked into The Find include Amazon and eBay. The reportedly has around 15 million users.
So what does Facebook want with this? The answer is adverts.
In a statement released by the shopping site announcing the deal with the social networking giant, The Find team said: “Key members of our team are joining the company and will be working hard to integrate our technology to make the ads you see on Facebook every day better and more relevant to you.
“Unfortunately, this means we will be taking our search engine offline in the next few weeks.”
Indeed Facebook themselves said something similar when they confirmed the purchase, highlighting how the search engine “connects people to products” and that they would now be applying the technology to the ads you see on Facebook.
With the search engine closing, this is not so much Facebook just wanting ownership while letting the company keep doing what it’s doing – like with Oculus – but rather dismantling a site to get hold of the technology under the hood. In this instance, The Find’s search algorithm.
Advertising is crucial to Facebook’s revenue stream (we’re talking billions of dollars) and making the adverts that users see more personal is something the firm has been working on almost as long as it’s been in existence.
Combining the data Facebook already has through your habits and Likes on the site with what The Find can offer means you might soon begin to see even more tightly-tailored product placement bordering your newsfeed.
