Amazon, Facebook partner to make recommendations social

Online retail giant Amazon on Tuesday launched a beta of new functionality intended to use data from Facebook to make recommendations. Once connected, the retailer would comb through the data in both your own profile and that of your friends.

Amazon said it would share no personal data with Facebook. The social networking site would be sending data over to Amazon, however: this would include the user's likes and favorites on Facebook as well as his or her friends, and their birthdays. In addition, Amazon would make it easier for a user to find a friend's wish list once the services are connected, but this would be a guess based on given information.

The attempt here is to make the online shopping experience more social. Given that we often ask our friends and relatives for suggestions on purchases, or find ourselves guessing what somebody else likes, such a partnership seems to make sense.

While the site was at the forefront of offering recommendations based on past purchases and aggregate sales data, Tuesday's integration with Facebook takes that a step further, and hopefully more personal.

Once connected, the user's recommendation page would include a list of upcoming Facebook friend birthdays. A full page can be accessed which further lists recommendations based on what's popular among your friends, and possible music and movie matches based on your own "likes" on the social networking service.

Notably missing here is Facebook's "Like" button, which would have allowed users to like a particular product, which then would have appeared on that user's wall. It was not immediately clear why Amazon chose to not integrate this service.

The new partnership is the second social move by Amazon in as many months. The company acquired Woot in late June for an estimated $110 million.