• Social Beat, Wednesday, July 28, 2010 2:16 PM

If you hadn't heard, Amazon just tapped Facebook to offer site visitors a personalized page where they can see product recommendations influenced by friends, as well as their own tastes. Participating users will also get notifications regarding friends' birthdays, along with targeted suggestions about what to buy them. Social Beat describes the deal as "one of the social network's most important integrations yet."

For one, "A deep Amazon.com-Facebook partnership could help corner Google in the e-commerce market," it suggests. "If consumers start looking toward their friends to find out what to buy, they could be able to bypass Google altogether." The partnership also potentially spells trouble for a number of social shopping startups, including Blippy and Swipely. What's more, "Such a partnership could also lay the groundwork for Facebook to get key pieces of data, so it can start to quantitatively value how social recommendations translate into sales," Social Beat adds. That's despite the company's claims that it's not getting purchase history on specific individuals.

Read the whole story at Social Beat »