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Today a customer peers through their browser at a world of web sites. Each a walled garden around a CRM database. If the customer chooses to interact, their account information, purchases and preferences goes into that database. What the site knows of the customer has either been entered by them into a web form, or inferred from their behaviour. The merchant's ability to delight, surprise and service the customer is only as good as the data they have. Unfortunately, what they have is sketchy and approximate. Does Amazon know that I really bought that book for a friend? Not at all. But how to gain a richer profile? Asking consumers to fill in forms is annoying at best, and begs the question "what's going to be done with all this valuable profile information, over which I have no control?".

Social Commerce is what happens when customers are empowered with their own data. Instead of merchants holding customer data, the customer holds it and shares it with the merchants. In Social Commerce the consumer still uses a browser, but they are simultaneously connected to a  i-card broker service. A i-card broker is an independently hosted internet service that manages the customer's profile and relationship data. It allows the customer to edit and control it, and makes it available to merchants under the terms the customer finds agreeable.

The i-card broker has a web interface. Using it you can:

• Review and edit your profile data in a variety of contexts
• Specify anonymous profiles that allow you to safely "project" your preferences and interests without indentifying who you really are
• Automatically fill in forms, remember passwords, etc.
• Create and join new groups
• Invite people to groups
• Browse and search for members of the group's social network
• Communicate via email and IM with other members of a group
• Create and read reviews of a products and/or entire sites
• Manage your reputation and see the reputation of other customers and merchants

The i-card broker also provides a set of web services. Using these the a website can:

• Gain access to the signed-in consumer's (usually anonymous) profile and use this to customize site content
• Leverage a set of i-card broker-provided web services including: member-to-member email and IM communications