Deprecated - Social software and communities

I have a site where I want OG group admins to be able to add new users to use the group like a mailing list.

At the present, I have to assign them a role and give the Group Leader role Administrate Users priveleges to let them access Users and the Add User form, where they can be created with the group membership checkbox set.

This is dangerous since they could also do malicious things to users so I have to just trust them at present.

Has anyone checked out Ning lately? I just found out they've relaunched with version 2 and it looks quite impressive. It allows anyone to create a very functional social networking site for free without technical knowhow. They've seriously improved their service since I checked them out when they initially launched. Obviously, drupal offers more control and flexbility. But Ning seems well suited for non-tech people to offer something that could stand its own next to a drupal powered social networking site. They charge $5/mo if you want to use your own domain name and have other thing you have to pay for like if you need more storage/bandwidth or to remove ads. And apparently you will be able to export your data easily if you choose to leave their platform. They're also looking to add OpenID support.

Techcrunch article
Demo video

How far along is Drupal in terms of implementing similar features on a site relatively easily without needing to do extensive hacking and modifying existing code? It would be cool to see a current list of modules that can best accomplish this. From what I can gather, people seem to be using a lot of:
Usernode
CCK
Node images

How's it going fellow drupal'rs? I've searche for awhile now and can't seem to find exactly what i'm looking for.

I'd to have 1 of the 2 things happen...preferably the first one.

1. A new user comes to my site and decides to register. They will then choose which type of registration they would like (Business or Personal). Based on what they choose they will be assigned the appropriate role within access control and forwarded onto the appropriate page where they will finish filling out the appropriate information.

-or-

Hello everybody,

I've been working on a test site for my gaming clan. We wanted to use Drupal but we're currently stuck in creating sexier user profiles. The community has been great in helping but they are experts and the explanations are beyond our knowledge T_T so basically we're stuck lol.

Hi there,

Here is my problem.
I use Drupal to run an intranet website for my school,
My main Menu is divided in several sub-menus.
The access to the site as a reader/visitor is open to anyone.
There is one maintainer/redactor for each sub-menu.
So basically, i want to learn if I can 'lock' each redactor in its own sub-menu so he can only edit/create posts in his own menu,
and keep an admin for the whole site for administration.

I tried several access-control, user management modules (V.5.x), without meeting this requirements.