Amazon becomes the best Facebook Connect implementation yet

On Tuesday, Amazon implemented Facebook Connect to become - in our opinion - one of the greatest Connect implementations yet. This is a match made in heaven and takes Social Networking and connectedness to a new level. Read on to find out why and learn about some of the sensitive decisions Amazon made, that will make this move propel Amazon’s business and affect their bottom line. So how does it work? Amazon’s might, power and success is due to a large degree, to its recommendation engine. As you purchase more books, music or any of the thousands of products available, it learns about your personal tastes and sends you an email with the latest offerings that match. This is excellent for personal use, but the one aspect that has been missing all these years is understanding what your friends or family might like as a gift, sure you might ask them but what if you’d like the gift to be a surprise? Enter Facebook Connect and what you see on the right in the image below is a list of friends birthdays. Clicking on the Amazon Facebook Page brings up options to see gift suggestions for friends as well as which books/products are popular among specific friends. This makes it extremely easy to spend money with Amazon - by simply clicking on a recommended gift I can purchase a friend a gift that they actually want and don’t even have to know where it should be delivered because Amazon should have those details already. What are the benefits of connecting Amazon and Facebook? Tap into your Facebook network to improve your Amazon shopping experience: Discover Amazon recommendations for movies, music, and more based on your Facebook Favourites and Likes. See upcoming birthdays and find Amazon Wish Lists for your friends on Facebook more easily. Get great gift suggestions for your friends based on their Facebook Favorites and Likes. Explore your friends' Favorites and see who has similar interests. Treading carefully But why would you want your friends to see what products you have purchased before? That could be dangerously close to privacy violations and perhaps the end of a marriage or two. So how has Amazon solved this problem? Quite easily actually: Your personal Amazon data will not be shared with Facebook: Amazon will not share information from your account with Facebook. Amazon will not share your purchase history with Facebook. Amazon will not attempt to contact your friends on Facebook. Amazon will never post anything to your Facebook Wall without your consent. This means that only the information that you have shared on Facebook or have Liked on the web is pulled into Amazon from Facebook and not the other way around. Let’s wait and see the impact this has on Amazon's bottom line.