BuddyPress.org

Fact is that not every website needs to be a social network, same as not every site needs to be a blog network.

BuddyPress, much like WordPress, shines when you don’t even know you’re using it, and it’s up to good themes to make that happen; something BuddyPress lacks when compared to WordPress.

There are limitless setups that you could dream up with mutlisite WordPress and BuddyPress, but none of them matter if the theme can’t pull that functionality out to be front and center. Multiple blogs, sites, networks, domains, communities, groups, etc… I think it’s safest to mirror the development of your community similarly to how one prepares a server; react to the size and don’t over-prepare. If you have 10 users, you probably won’t need W3 Total Cache and a CDN. Once you have 10,000 active users, you may want to consider beefing things up. Same with BuddyPress; once you have a ton of users, turn on groups and forums, or add something new and exciting.

Community features should match community size. If you turn on too many features with not enough users, your website looks like a ghost town, and no one will join. If you don’t have enough features, people will get bored and leave. BuddyPress does its best to let you find that balance pretty quickly, and helps you shape your online community how you see fit.

It’s like SimCity, but without the natural disasters.