Amazon.com, Inc. last week launched Friends & Family Gifting, an application that lets users merge their Facebook and Amazon accounts to find gift suggestions.
Once the user connects to their Facebook account, they'll be able to see the Wish Lists that their friends have created on Amazon as well as information about things they may have "Liked" through Facebook. According to a press release, "Customers can find existing Amazon Wish Lists to make it easy to find the perfect gift for their friends. By connecting their Amazon and Facebook accounts, customers can also use information about their Facebook friends, such as the things their friends 'Like,' to select a gift."
Other benefits of the tool:
- Centralize/Share Gift Lists: Customers gain a tool to centralize their gift-giving ideas in one place. Using the Gift Lists feature, customers can create and share gift ideas via email, Facebook, Twitter and Pinterest;
- Keep Track of Friends & Family: Consumers can store birthdays, anniversaries and other special dates of their acquaintances. Reminders of the events can be linked directly to their existing Wish Lists for a quick view of gift suggestions;
- Gift Recommendations: Plug in an age and/or interest and Amazon's Family Gifting provides gift recommendations. The feature is said to be particularly beneficial in decided what to buy for kids with little Facebook access.
For those without a Facebook account or not wishing to synch their account to Amazon, there is an option to add friends manually by entering in their name, birth date and interests.
Friends & Family Gifting is said to resemble Walmart's Shopycat Facebook application launched last year and the Likeable Gifts Facebook service that CafePress launched last month. A day before the introduction, Facebook rolled out Facebook Gifts, which enables its users to buy presents for friends on the social network.
However, access to Amazon's Wish List provides an extra benefit for Amazon over the others.
Wrote Tim Peterson on Adweek, "While both Amazon and Facebook can crunch users' profile information to spit out gift ideas, Amazon's service also lets users manually compile Wish Lists of presents they'd like or their friends would like. If someone's Facebook friend has also connected his Facebook account with Amazon, they can view that friend's Wish List when their birthday pops up to facilitate the present-purchasing process."