Facebook has high aspirations to expand in both the big Internet money markets – search and e-commerce. Therefore, with the acquisition of the shopping search engine ‘TheFind,’ the social networker has clearly signaled its interest in both these fields.
Plans to lift digital advertising
With the acquisition, Facebook will be hoping to lift its digital advertising business. This is so because it is a dominant player in the industry with annual ad sales worth $12.6 billion last year.
Commenting on the deal, Facebook said, “Together, we believe we can make the Facebook ads experience even more relevant and better for consumers.”
TheFind echoed similar thoughts, saying its technology would be combined into Facebook “to make the ads you see on Facebook every day better and more relevant to you.” Both the companies will work on improving the relevance of the social network’s advertising with employees from TheFind joining Facebook, said TheFind in its web post, adding that in few weeks’ time, the search engine of TheFind will go offline.
Facebook wants its users to purchase goods directly from its site for which it has been testing a ‘Buy’ button since July 2014. The social networker is expected to add additional shopping tools to its service following this acquisition. As of now, no details have been released by the social networker regarding the acquisition including the price it paid.
Facebook had a different task for TheFind
In 2006, TheFind was co-founded by two of the native Indians; CEO Siva Kumar and CTO Shashikant Khandelwal. Since 2007, no cash influx has been received by TheFind, which successfully raised $26 million in three investment rounds. The financing was raised by it in venture capital from sources that included Bain Capital Ventures, Cambrian Ventures, Lightspeed Venture Partners and Redpoint Ventures.
TheFind helped the customers to search through a large number of products on different sites at once. However, with Facebook it will be tasked with making sure that users see the ads for the products that are interested in, according to an emailed statement from a Facebook spokeswoman to the Mercury News. According to the social network, its objective with the acquisition is more about targeting advertisements than on e-commerce.
