BuddyPress is an open source social networking software package owned by Automattic

Automattic

Automattic, Inc. is a web development corporation founded in August 2005.It is most notable for WordPress.com , as well as its contributions to WordPress .-Projects:Other projects include:...

 since 2008. It is a plugin that can be installed on WordPress

WordPress

WordPress is a free and open source blogging tool and publishing platform powered by PHP and MySQL. It is often customized into a content management system . It has many features including a plug-in architecture and a template system. WordPress is used by over 14.7% of Alexa Internet's "top 1...

 to transform it into a social network platform. BuddyPress is designed to allow schools, companies, sports teams, or any other niche community to start their own social network or communication tool.

BuddyPress inherits and extends upon the integral functional elements of the WordPress engine including themes, plugins, and widgets. As it is built on WordPress it is written using the same primary technologies, PHP

PHP

PHP is a general-purpose server-side scripting language originally designed for web development to produce dynamic web pages. For this purpose, PHP code is embedded into the HTML source document and interpreted by a web server with a PHP processor module, which generates the web page document...

 and MySQL

MySQL

MySQL officially, but also commonly "My Sequel") is a relational database management system that runs as a server providing multi-user access to a number of databases. It is named after developer Michael Widenius' daughter, My...

.

Features

BuddyPress has a range of features that will allow the creation of a social network application.

The basic installed system offers:

• Activity Streams
• User Profiles
  • Options to add user profile fields and sections
  • Avatar uploads
• Group Creation
  • Group discussion forums
  • Group logo and Wire
• Friend system
  • Messaging
• Bespoke themes
• Blogs per user (via the WordPress engine)

Group discussion forums are provided by the integration of the popular GPL forum software bbPress. With 1.1 versions and above, bbPress is seamlessly integrated within BuddyPress allowing for single sign-on and one click forum integration.

From the BuddyPress website:

Social networking in a box. Build a social network for your company, school, sports team or niche community all based on the power and flexibility of WordPress.

Releases

Version	Date
1.0	Apr 30 2009
1.1	Sept 30 2009
1.2	Feb 16 2010

A full release history can be found here.