Deprecated - Social software and communities

slight change to a query from taxonomy module at drupal 5 makes autocomplete search synonym made possible.
here is the change to function: taxonomy_autocomplete
line:1498 => old:

  $result = db_query_range(db_rewrite_sql("SELECT t.tid, t.name FROM {term_data} t WHERE t.vid = %d AND LOWER(t.name) LIKE LOWER('%%%s%%')", 't', 'tid'), $vid, $last_string, 0, 10);

new:

I have been looking over any documentation I can get my hands on, re: custom user profiles

Discussion in a email_registration module support thread at http://drupal.org/node/186128 led me to further examine all the issues associated with using Drupal for a Facebook-like authentication system.

Facebook only uses Email addresses for authentication and full names for user representation. In Drupal core, using full names as usernames is not an option because there are people with the same name and usernames need to be unique.

Here's a list of issues I have run into making drupal compatible with this sort of user system WITHOUT ALTERING CORE:

Full Names are not in the core user object

The easiest way to solve this is using profile.module to create a fullname field or a firstname and lastname field. A users email address represents a definite unique identifier for a user. While a person might have many email addresses, no email addresses have many owners (that would sign up for an account)

UI Forms that select user need unique usernames

I would like to use the "Activity" module to establish an activity feed much like on Facebook. The major difference being that this will be a small tight knit community in which I want all users to be friends with each other by default.

In other words I don't want users to have "to friend" each other and instead have all users see a feed based on all users activity.

very very greatful if anyone could help me on this. thanks:)

Is there a gifts module where users can send each other "gifts" or something similar?

Thanks!