With the mutual interaction and dependence of several intelligent services, a crowd intelligence service network has been formed, and a service ecosystem has gradually emerged. Such a development produces an ever-increasing effect on our lives and the functioning of the whole society. These facts call for research on these phenomena with a new theory or perspective, including what a smart society looks like, how it functions and evolves, and where its boundaries and challenges are. However, the research on service ecosystems is distributed in many disciplines and fields, including computer science, artificial intelligence, complex theory, social network, biological ecosystem, and network economics, and there is still no unified research framework. The researchers always have a restricted view of the research process. Under this context, this paper summarizes the research status and future developments of service ecosystems, including their conceptual origin, evolutionary logic, research topic and scale, challenges, and opportunities. We hope to provide a roadmap for the research in this field and promote sound development
