BuddyPress is described as “social networking in a box” because of the range of included features,
BuddyPress 1.2 includes:
Activity Streams: Global, personal and group activity streams with threaded commenting, direct posting, favoriting and @mentions. All with full RSS feed and email notification support.
Extended Profiles: Editable profile fields allow you to define the fields users can fill in to describe themselves.
Extensible Groups: Public, private or hidden groups allow users to break the discussion down into specific topics. Extend groups with your own custom features using the group extension API.
Friend Connections: Users can make connections to track the activity of others, or filter on only those users they care about the most.
Private Messaging: Private messaging will allow users to talk to each other directly, and in private. Not just limited to one-on-one discussions, users can send messages to multiple recipients.