Facebook shops for ads tech – snaps up product search engine TheFind

Facebook has bought Mountain View, California-based product search engine TheFind for an undisclosed sum. The outfit, founded in 2006, confirmed the takeover from Mark Zuckerberg's free content ad network in a statement on its website. TheFind claimed to have helped 1 billion shoppers track down products using its service, …

[Mark 85]

I might be a consumer by definition, but if you want my business, you damn well better call me a "customer". And no, I've never used "TheFind" and never intended to with an attitude like that. They and Zuck deserve each other.

[Scoular]

They say - to do even more for consumers

but do they mean

to do even more TO consumers

Is all that help really needed, most of us probably have a fair idea what is out there in the market and are quite able to search ourselves.

[phil dude]

all ads are provably 99% crap....

there I said it. The problem with all ads is the assumptions made. Something like the following (and I have no training in advertising so you know these are just as made up).

1) The product/service being advertised is wanted by X people

2) The product/service is affordable by Y people.

3) The product/service is already owned by Z people.

Nothing else seems to matter. All ads assume X>1, Y>1 and Z<X.

Let's work on the 1% principle. That is, everyone in the 1% can afford 99% of the available products services. This is not as arbitrary as it sounds...!

Therefore in a population of N only N/100 will have 100% of X be able to become 100% Y.

Since income follows a distribution it basically means on average 99% of ads are crap for 99% of us.

Did I miss something?

P.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: all ads are provably 99% crap....

"Did I miss something?"

Yeh, you missed the part were nobody notices the numbers, because nobody notices the ads. So plug in zero everywhere that you have a positive value, and your numbers are accurate (which makes your point even stronger).

No matter how rich or poor you are, you still ignore crap in your face.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: all ads are provably 99% crap....

Yes, what you're missing is that the advertising industry knows all this.

It knows that less that 1% of people on average click on an ad.

It knows people hate ads, publishers (app/site owners) are the ones who control what ads you see, and how annying they are.

What advertisers want is to know a certain demographic is AWARE of their brand. Nothing more.

[Anonymous Coward]

Hmm...ambiguous?

"...Facebook to do even more for consumers."

But I don't want them to "do" me.

[Steve Davies 3]

So....

Company 'A' located in a Town buys another comany('B') that is located in the same town.

Colour me cynical but could 'B' have located itself close to 'A' just to make purchase this more attractive?

6 months from now, the employees will have been absorbed into the Borg. All that means is that they'll have to turn left at the last stop light on their commute rather than turning right.

Now if it was something like

Company 'A' that has it's HQ in California has bought company 'B' that is located in a remote town some 500 Km from Ulan Bator, Mongolia.

Then IMHO, a few more people might take anything more than a passing interest.

[mfckr]

Never heard of "TheFind" before now, but just tried using the search engine and it actually doesn't seem to be entirely useless for doing price comparisons (I like it better than Google Shopping at least).

But that seems the norm these days—i.e., useful services being bought out/shutdown by larger tech moguls who are apparently driven to disrupt anything that doesn't directly contribute to their own ad-based revenue schemes, etc.

[Chris G]

The Find is utter rubbish so it will go well with Farcebook, fairly often when searching for a specific product, The Find has popped up in the results and to date it only looks for similar words in your search and NEVER any relevance, a smart search engine it is not.