Facebook Acquires TheFind, Aims to Compete In Ecommerce

Facebook made the announcement today that it has acquired TheFind, a comparison shopping engine with strong mobile capabilities and a unique barcode scanning app. With the acquisition, the social networking giant aims to improve its product ads and expand its reach into the ecommerce market.

TheFind, which had branded its service as "The only way to search the entire shoppable web," will give Facebook an entry into the shopping engine landscape currently ruled by Google. According to its company page, more than 15 million shoppers already use TheFind to access 500 million products.

But what should be most intriguing to online merchants is how Facebook's 1.23 billion loyal users will respond to the social network's new shopping engine.

"We are now starting our next chapter by combining forces with Facebook to do even more for consumers," TheFind Team said on its homepage. "Facebook's resources and platform give us the opportunity to scale our expertise in product sourcing to the over 1 billion people that use the platform."

Key members of TheFind will be joining Facebook to complete the transition. TheFind.com will not be searchable over the next few weeks, however, which means merchants currently advertising on TheFind should look at other sources of traffic.

If Facebook's new shopping engine is a hit, like most of Facebook previous endeavors, Facebook could be unleashing an ecommerce powerhouse that will rival the likes of Google Shopping and Amazon.