ah i see its starting to make more sense now
i am in the process of converting a large php social site into wordpress and just came across buddypress and it looks like the answer to my problems.
So when a user signs up to my site in wordpress are they signing up through wordpress and then buddypress takes this information and allows more social things to be done with it?
I have to pick a new theme for the site so i guess it wil make sense to pick a wordpress/buddypress theme to make sure i get the most out of it all.