Facebook Buys TheFind To Beef Up Its Ad-Stalking Game

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Facebook announced on Friday that it has purchased TheFind, a Mountain View-based discovery-shopping search engine that helps consumers locate lifestyle items like clothing and shoes based on relevance instead of paid placement. In other words, it has a fancy algorithm that will find the pair of sandals that you want instead of the sandals that advertisers want you to want.

What's interesting here is that Facebook didn't buy TheFind to harness its shopping powers. Zuckerberg's company just wants to improve its predictive ad placement. A Facebook spokeswoman said in an emailed statement to the Mercury News that TheFind team will be tasked with making sure Facebook users see ads for products they want.

"Together, we believe we can make the Facebook ads experience even more relevant and better for consumers," the statement explains. "Our business is about connecting people with the topics, companies, brands, and increasingly products they care about and we look forward to doing that with TheFind on board."

So when Facebook starts pitching you to buy things you subconsciously need, you can credit TheFind with reading your mind.