Amazon is using Facebook Connect to offer its users social recommendations for online shopping.

The online retail giant has hatched a plan that will use Facebook profile data to make product recommendations on Amazon’s US and Canadian site. If a Facebook user opts into the service, they will find gift suggestions for their Facebook friends on the recommendations page of Amazon. The suggestions would be based on the information on their friends’ Facebook profiles - such as music or movie preferences - and also their Amazon wish lists.

For Amazon, knowing which of their customers know each other would be an extremely powerful marketing tool and Facebook’s global user base of 500 million means the  could scale very quickly. This Facebook Platform page update suggests the service is entirely opt-in, using Facebook Connect, and would no doubt be subject to Facebook users’ privacy settings. For added peace of mind, TechCrunch reports that Amazon will not reveal your account or purchase history or contact any of your Facebook friends.

The deal with Amazon follows Facebook’s announcement that it would allow publishers to contact users who ‘like’ a particular story - another development with significant implications for marketers.

A Facebook spokeswoman said this was not a “deal” between the two companies but simply Amazon choosing to implement Facebook Connect on its site.