Social Networking Software vs. Web Developer - Which would you prefer?

I have been doing research on social network software and I have spoke to a fe web developers. I was told by web developers that it is best to go with a developer when building a social network, but when you calculate all the hours of scripting it tends to be rather expensive and some script errors can be over looked. On the other hand, the software provides all the features and is less expensive but you are limited to how far your network can grown depending on the package. A web developer stated that some software are known to crash at times and its best to invest to get scriptind done correctly. I am not sure which one I would go with being that I am not that educated in this field.

Social Networking Software vs. Web Developer - Which would you prefer?
Go for Open Source software that can be freely obtained and has public documentation available. Amule, mldonkey, OpenDC are a few. The cost here will be time not money. If you are going for a central server, then you will need a secure and powerful system to handle the load. Better go with a BSD, up the memory to 16G, set the max number of users, secure, open only the ports you needm use iptables, and have a good bandwidth set up. Initial cost here would be memory and line cost.

diet