The Microsoft ecosystem is the most diverse and extensive of all the vendor ecosystems. Before the cloud the ecosystem was split into communities centered around product groups and within those communities into sub-communities, centered on industry verticals. With Azure, an ecosystem within the greater ecosystem is emerging. Application marketplaces (vendor or channel) will take on social functionality and eCommerce will evolve to take on aspects of Social Commerce. Steve Rubel (author of Micro Persuasion blog) has expanded the definition of Social Commerce to include collaborative e-commerce tools that enable buyers "to get advice from trusted individuals, find goods and services and then purchase them". We believe that this is the definition of Social Commerce with cloud app marketplaces. 

Now ISVs need to focus on technical and business, as well as on-premise and cloud, private cloud and public cloud, in addition to product and industry vertical specific communities. With time we will see social media aggregation within these communal networks, as we are seeing in mainstream social network services. What presence ISVs need to have within communities and networks really boils down to the value proposition and segmentation, which are core elements of operationalization of the ISVs business strategy. Value and segmentation defines the ISVs identity.

On top of the vendor and channel community portals and marketplace social extensions, the ecosystems bridge into mainstream social networks.