TheFind introduces price alerts Facebook app

TheFind, an e-commerce company, has introduced a service that emails Facebook users when items they Like go on sale.

As part of TheFind’s Facebook app, Glimpse, Universal Price Alerts will keep track of what products you Like around the Web, and when they go on sale, the feature will email you.

Siva Kumar, TheFind’s chief executive, said that until now there hasn’t been as much of a purpose in Liking an item’s product page as there has in Liking an article. He said he hopes his new feature will change that.

“Why Like a product?” Kumar said. “Now you know exactly why you should Like something -- even the retailer knows why the button is there.”

Kumar said 140 million products on the Internet have Like buttons. The way TheFind makes money from the feature is if a user purchases an item after getting the price alert -- merchants give TheFind a slice of the sale.

Facebook, Kumar said, has potential to be good e-commerce tool, but isn’t being used as such yet. He said companies want to use Facebook that way, and even Facebook is exploring ways to do so, citing the purported discovery of a “Want” button the company may be testing.

Stores “don’t know how to get back to you,” he said. “We’re trying to make that connection easier.”

But while a Want button could render TheFind’s new feature irrelevant, Kumar said he remained confident in the product. He also said the future of Glimpse may be to tie price alerts to other social media buttons, such as Pinterest’s.

“Today is the Like button, tomorrow it could very well be any of the other buttons,” he said, adding later: “This isnt about the button itself -- it’s about the shopping experience.”

TheFind is based in Mountain View, Calif., and receives about 15 million unique visits each month.

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