Can Web 2.0 be a little more intimate?

As an ESL teacher, my primary objective is simply to foster communication. Many web 2.0 sites, such as Twitter, YouTube, Facebook, VoiceThreads, Mindmeister, and countless more, have great potential to facilitate meaningful communication when integrated with the classroom. However, undertaking course objectives on the world wide web is like taking a class outside. It may be nice for a change, but it’s too distracting to actually get much done. Even more importantly, students have a right to privacy and it’s unethical to force students to publish their work on the internet where anyone can see.

What I hope is that these great sites that manage user generated content soon allow for small groups of users to form private webspace. Teachers could set up a Twitter page or a VoiceThreads account for a group of students who are automatically linked to each other. This may even make it easy for classes to make contacts and start up conversations with other groups of learners in other parts of the world.

I know that with most web 2.0 applications, there are certain choices the user can make for privacy. It would be possible to put a video on YouTube and make it viewable to only the other students in a class, for example. However, when orchestrating multiple accounts, usernames, and passwords for a group of students, there’s always going to be some who fall through the cracks. I hope that in the near future, many of these sites create applications with teachers and student privacy in mind.

Does anyone know of any good sites that allow for groups of users to be easily created? I suppose Blogger is one example that is appropriate because it’s pretty easy to set up a single blog with multiple authors. Any others?