Drupal does have comparable social networking tools and is worth considering. It is more of a “proper CMS”, but also considerably more difficult to configure properly.
I’d recommend against Joomla if for no other reason than they don’t have an upgrade path. They have fewer extensions available, and more of their extensions cost money. I also wasn’t a big fan of the social network tools available.
In the end, I went with WordPress because I love how easy it is to update, and how easy it us to update all my plugins. I looked at Mingle, WP-Symposium and Buddypress. Of the three, Buddypress had the most features and plugins, and seemed to have the most developer support.
I think it is the best tool out there for building a social network personally, but your mileage may vary.
Thanks for your comments. Let’s wait & watch for more views from other members.
You’re asking on a BuddyPress forum which is the best social networking plugin? You’re going to get biased responses 
Buddypress hates themes and gives me the most problems with the plugin.
I like Mingle but they need to start working on it again and add more options and let you turn off features you don’t want.
@greenmeanie WordPress works with any theme if you use the Template Pack.
And Mingle is dreadfully incomparable to BP.
WP wins in almost every category: http://deviousmedia.com/infographics/devious_cms.png
Hi Inermike, thanks for sharing a beautiful comparison chart.
He asked a tool for wordpress. What does that have to do with WordPress Template Pack? I use the add-on for buddypress to make the theme compatible and it doesn’t work all the way.
i think buddypress is the best. budypreess is the speediest social network i know .. but we need more features and i hope they will come with the next version ..
