Online shopping has now been taken to another level. Using Facebook Connect, Amazon allows you to connect it with your Facebook account. In doing so, this feature delves into your Facebook network and gives recommendations based on your friend’s likes and favourites.
Users can find:
- Amazon gift suggestions on music, movies, books and TV shows- based on Facebook Favourites and Likes
- Upcoming birthdays and their Facebook friends’ Amazon Wish Lists
- Gift ideas based on Facebook profiles
- Gift ideas based on friends with similar interests
Would this help drive your purchase decisions? Personally, I never know what to get people for their birthdays, so this integration would make shopping for presents much easier. It will give me good ideas on what my friend would like based on their interests and likes. And therefore “place the user’s friends right inside the buying cycle” comments HypeBot's Bruce Houghton. This feature is a nice new step into the online social shopping concept. However it feels as if it’s only skimming the surface and could be developed further. On the flip side, this has some cause to raise concern over privacy and the information they can now gather about you and your friends. With Social features like this coming into play, it lends even more weight to making sure the people you friend on Facebook really are in your circle of friends, and not simply random people. It will be interesting to see what Facebook has in store for us later down in the track.
