Hello guys and have a happy and healthy new year.
I would like to ask the more advanced users what software is the best to use for a social networking website. Something that would be able to offer user registration and profiles, polls, blogs, photo albums, and boards etc.
All the best for 2009....

If there's any such tool available then I'd too like to know more about it.

I've never used any of these but I've seen them mentioned for doing the type of thing you want to do. I think they all run on Linux.
I believe there's a plugin for Drupal called Red5 that lets it do much of what you want to do. I'd check out the other Drupal plugins as well.
I've heard some youtube clone scripts mentioned - VideoShare and ClipShare.
I'd search this site for the keywords/phrases:
Red5
youtube clones
ClipShare
VideoShare
FFmpeg
FFmpeg-PHP
Flvtool2
Mencoder
Mplayer
Libogg
Libvorbis
Lame mp3 encoder
You might also check PHPMotion but I'm not sure what it's current status is with respect to support and ownership of the product.
A lot of this stuff is free or open source, IIRC.
Hope this helps. Please let us know what you find.
David

Thanks for the Recommendations. I certainly look for something that is combatible with Drupal, so any suggestions are more than welcome.
All the best

Take a look at Elgg (http://elgg.org/).

Elgg is good.
Dolphin is also a good Social Networking CMS and I am currently looking to host a site on that software. It has all the features you require. http://www.boonex.com/products/dolphin/
Hope this helps ;)

Guys you are great! Any more input? I just want to provide the best service as it would be for a non profit site helping people around the globe. deanpcmad pls give some feedback if you use "Dolphin" in the meantime.
Thank again and keep the great work.

Dolphin is good but there is a security threat if your host doesn't enable your server with suPHP and make the corresponding folders and files to 755 and 644.

if you are looking for a paid script, check out socialengine, if you are looking cheap (free) check out elgg.....
as for a digg.com clone, check out Pligg (free)
Chris

Didn't Ruby on Rails (the programming language) have a "create a social networking web site in 15 minutes" thing? I thought it was a video showing off the language. ...Food for thought.
-mike

All look promising, Thank you guys. I will try and see what might be the best out there.
Take care