FB sucks and yes you have to sort through the INSANITY, but that’s where the action is happening these days. I HATE it.
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Over 36% of people on Earth use Facebook as of 2022. It’s not going anywhere in the next 5 years. Let’s not forget that Meta owns Instagram, which continues to steadily grow.
Those folks at the 'book are pretty smart. They’ll think of ways to keep themselves relevant. Might include virtual reality and the production of entertainment content among other things.
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My trainer and I tried everything (we were rigorously searching for 8 months in 2021), and finally found my guy through an ISO post on a Wellington/Ocala FB group (I live in Texas). I would try to look for super niche facebook groups in areas that sell a lot of what you are looking for. In my case I wanted a young hunter prospect, and I got the best responses by FAR in the Florida group.
Pic for tax. We are coming up on our one year anniversary together 
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I just bought my dream unicorn and tried two others that I would have been happy to purchase. I did two Facebook ISO ads, one in the US that gave me nothing useful (yeah, I already saw your OTTB that needs surgery but could “jump Grand Prix” and opted not to message you…) the second one in Canada that got me excellent responses. Some that didn’t fit what I was looking for but were really nice horses. A couple of crazies, that were wildly unsuited but that wasn’t the norm. Then, since I knew where I was traveling, I googled hunter jumper barns on the way, checked everyone’s website and social media, and found several more that I hadn’t seen advertised anywhere. Saw one of those that turned out to be too much horse for me but wow was he a quality animal, ended up trying a second there that wasn’t listed yet and was the sweetest mare but not quite what I was looking for. Ended up buying one from a sales barn that was indeed listed on Facebook. If that trip hadn’t planned out I would have travelled 12 hours to another sales barn that had 5 in my price range that I thought were worth looking at. So, a lot of Facebook unfortunately, seems to be the way, but got a little creative and found a couple more.
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Sure - I’ll pm you her info!
I find ISO ads to be very useful. Yes you weed through crap. 
Within the last couple years I had two clients buy the best horses, both from my ISO ads. These particular horses were not yet advertised, but the seller saw my description and thought their horses would be a nice fit.
I also like to scroll through other people’s ISO ads, looking through the comments to see if I like any of them. So a lot of the sellers are responding on your ad to get the word out to other buyers, even if it doesn’t exactly match your description.
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They are in big trouble for selling data (expect $$$ fines!) . Facebook is not growing and Instagram is trying to imitate Tic Toc. I said what I said-five more years.
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I hate how Facebook is taking over everything on the internet, because its software is SO BAD. Searching for nearly anything you wanted to buy used to be so much easier when you could actually search and filter on a purpose-built website with structured data. (Don’t get me started on how much I miss Ebay for used tack. Sigh.)
But I will say that ISO ads there seem to be helpful, both because they narrow the firehose somewhat to include a greater share of what you’re looking for, and because the options come right to you vs. forcing you to fight with the algorithm to find the highest probability ads–and guess about price range.
I do recommend being as specific as possible about what you actually want. A vague phrase like “young prospect” will open the floodgates. (I get why you are being vague here, but don’t be vague there because everyone thinks their horse is a prospect!)
I actually found a horse as a response to someone else’s ISO. So I also recommend following posts from people looking for horses similar to what you seek.
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Indeed. You better believe, as a seller, I’m going to put my “young prospect” on every ad that they check 75-80% of the requirements. Don’t say things like “budget depends on the horse” (is it $5k or $50k?) or say you’re willing to ship if that actually excludes half the country. Mention in your ISO if you need a 100% spic-and-span vetting or a week-long trial or can’t take a horse who cribs, etc.
Word of mouth is the way. FB is not designed to make your search easy, it’s designed to suck you in and keep you scrolling.
What it can be useful for is getting background info on a farm or trainer and seeing what kind of horses go through their program.
There’s a sales barn in my area that does a really nice job presenting sales horses that I started following during my search. I noticed during the height of the the Covid sales frenzy they weren’t even posting anything for sale, just congrats sold posts. Everything was selling before they could even post.
Another agent I know will advertise older horses, but avoids advertising young prospects because they don’t want unknown randos coming to try young green horses. They need to know enough about the buyers to know they are capable of sitting on a youngster. So youngsters are usually sold through word of mouth.
So my suggestion would be to use FB to reach out to sellers who post the type of horse you are looking for and see if they have anything that fits your criteria that isn’t advertised yet.
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I am happy to be an enabler! I’m good at it 
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Politely decline and than block if they become a nuisance
It seems like word of mouth is increasingly playing a role. Same thing, saw a lot of congratulations posts for horses that were never marketed publicly (even mentioned on their post). Finding a good agent or trainer you trust is so hard, but if you can find someone who is good and connected, it seems to really open up doors.
100% agreed with Facebook sucking you in. Looking at horse classifieds on pages is really the only reason I still have an account.
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I’d never thought of it this way but I’m guessing this is spot on. Fb doesn’t make money having an easy to navigate marketplace, they make money by keeping users using their site as long as possible. To use a term from the software industry: crappy search functionality isn’t a bug, it’s a feature.
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Oddly enough, after exhaustively searching Facebook and warmbloods for sale.com and just about anywhere else I could think of on the internet, I found my current horse (FEI dressage schoolmaster) on Dreamhorse, about 2 years ago.
I found a previous wonderful horse there too. But that was 15 years ago.
Networking and FB mostly. I spend hours, and I mean hours scrolling and communicating and watching vids and in addition many calls and texts to trainer friends. When I put a buying trip together I try to line up 3-20 horses to see depending on the time we have. It’s a lot of work. Good luck to you!!!
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It is just as bad as a seller. The reading comprehension skills in the horse girl population is at an astonishing all time low. FB has gotten bad about flagging any sort of mention of price, and a lot of groups wont allow it to even be mentioned. Believe me, as a seller I would LOVE to not deal with the hassle.
95% of my sales come from FB ads though. I know that is not what you want to hear, but it is true. Id suggest trying to find groups specific to what you are looking for and using just the group search function. I also find that comments on other ISO ads lead to the most of my traction too.
I am not sure what you are looking for, and I do not have much for sale right now, but I am happy to share my list of groups if you let me know what you’re looking for!
You know what’s crazy though? They allow puppies, cats, etc to be listed for sale no problem. But you want to sell a cow, horse, or other livestock? Oh no, not allowed.
Also, the kill buyer sites seem to be able to post their prices just fine 
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Right? And I was trying to sell a BLANKET and it got flagged.
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Depending on how young and how much of a prospect you’re looking for, many won’t be advertised because people (very generally) don’t want something they won’t be able to show for a while unless it’s dirt cheap.
I found my coming 4 y/o (unstarted) by literally looking for sporthorse breeders within reasonable distance, reading through the websites that seemed reasonably up-to-date and cold emailing the ones that seemed to be producing the kind of horses I want. The program I ended up buying from does not advertise on any of the major sales sites or FB.
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