Mashable — “How Online Retailers Can Leverage Facebook’s Open Graph”
By Darren Vengroff
Formerly a Principal Engineer at Amazon, Darren Vengroff is Chief Scientist at RichRelevance where he helps retailers like Overstock and Sears create a more personal shopping experience for consumers. You can read more from Darren on the RichRelevance blog.
Amazon and Facebook are making headlines with the launch of a new application that allows shoppers to receive product recommendations based on Facebook preferences. Once users enable this app, Amazon is able to monitor their activity on Facebook, including what pages they like, and use that information to recommend products they may be interested in purchasing. Combining accounts with an application like this, whether specific to Amazon or other merchants, has the potential to be a compelling hybrid of social networking and shopping that creates value for shoppers and merchants.