Drupal Commons for social network

Being far more descriptive in your question might allow us to accurately gauge if drupal with minimal modules would be effective.

Yes, but it's not ready yet.

You should check out http://drupal.org/project/og. more help on social networks here (http://groups.drupal.org/social-networking-sites).

It was stated here it is more for intranets than social networks like FB.

http://www.mediacurrent.com/blogs/analysis-acquias-drupal-commons

What concerns me most about Commons is the gap between the audience it was designed for and some of the audience that will actually use it. Acquia is probably the most high-profile company in the Drupal community, so when they advertise a product as “social,” the large (but less lucrative) community of people looking for an easy way to build a user-oriented Facebook-style website will be attracted – and then disappointed. Jay assured me that if Acquia saw a demand at the business-customer level for a traditional social networking site, it would look into developing a solution – and while I believe him, I don’t think either of us really expect that to happen.

So let’s be clear: Drupal Commons is not a social network like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Flickr, YouTube, Buzz, Digg, Reddit, Care2, or TakingItGlobal. Drupal Commons is an enterprise social platform like Jive and Telligent, and it’s a fairly good one. There will be people who abuse that distinction, but no one will ever be able to stop people from misusing tools or not reading the documentation.

By the way, if you’re looking for a way to build a site like Facebook using Drupal, I can show you how to do it.