Beeker Studios

I decided to take a look at Social Networking solutions for higher education usage, but a lot of these solutions extend to use in a business, or organization. I think the thing that is critical to understand about implementing a solution like these, is that since all of them allow you to run them closed (as far as I can tell), they allow you to create a private and secure "social network". In my case this will be used to facilitate communication between advisors in different departments of a college. A hub of information, and there are solutions to this problem, such as a wiki, or a forum, but I think there's something to be said for looking at other solutions to the problem. I just want to point out that only a few of these solutions I have used with any regularity, or extensiveness, but I needed to look at the solutions myself, even on the surface.

BoonEx Dolphin - Looks really interesting, but I have apprehension about a solution that seems to offer the "kitchen sink" mentality. I won't discount this solution purely for that, but one nice feature is that there is a FREE iPhone app available (in the app store) to allow users to connect to your boonex dolphin installation.
Self-Hosted: Yes
Technologies: PHP, MySQL

BuddyPress - Seems to be based off of wordpress and a framework to build a social networking based blog platform.
Self-Hosted: Yes
Technologies: PHP, MySQL

Drupal - While this isn't a "turnkey" solution, there does seem to be some movement on some projects in regards to using Drupal as a social networking platform. One of them is an "OpenCircle" installation profile: http://drupal.org/project/opencircle , another one is an "Eduglu" installation profile: http://drupal.org/project/eduglu (this is also known as Open Atrium, which I mention below) and the last one, is a partially functioning "Drupal Social Network Framework" installation profile: http://drupal.org/project/dsnf_install. I have to admit I have a certain affinity to Drupal, I've been developing a variety of applications using it, purely because of the plethora of modules available, the constant development of the core and those modules, and the ability to customize every nook and cranny of it.

elgg. - the "open source" arm of elgg.com, interesting, but I haven't worked with it enough to understand it's limitations, and setbacks in regards to building more features into it.
Self-Hosted: Yes, and No (if you use elgg.com)
Technologies: PHP, MySQL

Ning - for me this "product", and I'm calling it that because they now charge for the average user, is free, because I will be using this in a higher education institution. This solution is in fact NOT open source, it's just a SAS, and I mention it only in the guise of use in higher education. It may be a solution for some people.
Self-Hosted: No
Technologies: ?

Open Atrium - I'm mentioning this separately from Drupal since the group that works on this seems to be marketing this as a separate turn-key solution, despite being essentially built on top of Drupal. Seems very interesting, if not a little clunky, especially in regards to the "micro-blogging" tool, which I have to admit is really the crux of what a lot of social media communication has come down to (facebook wall updates, twitter tweets, etc.)
Self-Hosted: Yes
Technologies: PHP, MySQL

Pay for Solutions

While I am focused on solutions that either cost nothing to my organization, or are actually open source, I can't justifiably not look at pay solutions to the problem, some of them are fairly cheap in the grand scheme of things. So here goes...

Social Engine - $250 + $30-$40 for each plugin - which to tell you the truth is both not that expensive, and altogether too expensive, when looking at the other free solutions. There does seem to be a community of users developing add-ons for this solution that also cost money, so that's something to think about.
Self-Hosted: Yes
Technologies: PHP, MySQL

phpFox - $99 - $299 - This reminds me of and feels like the Boonex Dolphin solution, the kitchen sink mentality, and when you're looking to keep things simple that may not work, especially when this is an experiment to start with. My solution needs to be simple.
Self-Hosted: Yes
Technologies: PHP, MySQL

From Here

There seems to be a lot of solutions out there, both free and paid for, it's almost overwhelming actually. I am actually not sure where to go from here, do I try and build a solution, burn man hours creating something that will never get used (I already created an intranet site, that is fairly simple to use, and also mimics some "social networking" type concepts, and it doesn't get used at all). Or do I implement one of the free turnkey solutions in hopes that it will be simple enough to get started with, not overwhelm users, and not be so limiting that the project can't expand.

So, do you know of any solutions, or have any perspective on the solutions i mention?