CHINA TOPIX

04/25/2024 05:56:20 pm

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Facebook Acquires E-Commerce Startup TheFind

Facebook acquired e-commerce search engine TheFind for an undisclosed amount on March 13 as the social network looks for new routes into the online shopping world.

It's the third public acquisition by Facebook this year following speech recognition service Wit.ai and video optimization service QuickFire.

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The social network is clearly unhappy with the results of its shopping expansion in 2014, failing to secure sizeable market share in the e-commerce market from Amazon, eBay and other services.

It's also using TheFind's digital advertising to further its own ad business, which brought in $12.6 billion last year in sales. Facebook has been investing heavily in mobile advertising, even opening up its mobile ads for third-party developers.

TheFind's search engine for goods is another feature Facebook could use, considering Graph Search was a bit of a failure for the social network. Launched in 2013 to some headlines proclaiming the end of Google, the execution was poor to say the least, and hasn't picked up steam in the past two years.

Facebook clearly wants more products and celebrities to be active on the social network so that its shopping service can become more widely available to anyone and everyone.

The first move is making sure users know they can add a credit card onto Facebook and then make sure they know their favorite band, shampoo or TV is only one click away from being ordered through Facebook.

The lack of effort from both consumer and business is a worry for Facebook, however, with millions of pages still not implementing any sort of 'Buy' button for products.