Amazon's new partnership with Facebook will give the world's largest online retailer even more insight into what its users want.

The Amazon logo Amazon and Facebook are launching a gift service together. ©AFP PHOTO/Emmanuel Dunand

Amazon describes the new Friends & Family Gifting feature as "a great way to keep track of birthdays and special occasions for everyone you gift." It will allow users to receive shopping email reminders, capture gift ideas with Gift Lists, to view and remember friends' Wish Lists, and of course to receive timely gift suggestions.

To sign up to the new feature, which is available in the US as of Wednesday, all a user has to do is merge their Amazon and Facebook accounts, which will prompt a matching of their Facebook friends with their Amazon profiles and wish lists (if they have any).

On Tuesday, Facebook rolled out its own Gifts service to all US users following a successful trial.

And while there are clear advantages in signing up for either service, the thought of giving even more personal information to two global sites that already probably know more about their users than those users' parents might be enough to put some people off.