OOB (Out of Box) Functionality

• Dolphin - Your site is ready to go once you are done with the installation. You can setup groups, classifieds, etc and tweak the site, but you have a community site that is functional after you complete the installation.
• phpFox - Your social networking web site is complete after the installation is complete. You can tweak the site, but phpFox provides a functioning social networking site once installation finishes.
• Joomla - You have a Joomla core ready to run. You can submit articles, create news feeds, edit content, publish content ... wait, we need a social network. This is software for a digital newspaper! Correct but with some major tweaking and addition of extensions, you will have a social network. Joomla core provides you with about 40% of the code needed to run a community site. The major component you will need to add to Joomla is Community Builder. Community Builder and its plugins (yes, Community Builder has plugins as well as Joomla core has plugins so make sure you install CB plugins in CB and Joomla plugins in Joomla!) gives you avatars, the ability to make connections (friends), profiles, photo galleries, etc.
• Drupal - Drupal core provides about 25% of the code necessary to make a community site. Drupal provides a forum which absolutely has to be replaced with Advance Forum if you want to keep a forum on your site. Drupal provides a simplified version of profiles, blogging, image upload, etc all of which can be enhanced due to Drupal's flexibility. You will need to download a bunch of modules with the main ones being Views, CCK, Organic Groups, TinyMCE (WYSIWYG editor), and Captcha (stop SPAM). There are a host of other modules to add to Drupal to get things working like you want them.
• Ning - Ning is like the Microsoft of social networking platforms. Everything is point and click and works well as long as you don't try to do anything that is not within the normal realm of point and click. You have a function site as soon as you register and all that is required is supplying content.
• Kickapps - Out of the box, Kickapps gives you the ability to upload video, audio, add friends, etc. They are very similar to Ning if you prefer to keep everything on the Kickapps servers and will require a little more tweaking if you want to integrate Kickapps into an existing site.