Thanks for the feedback. I've thought about this project for a long, long time. I've figured most of it out, but I haven't really written down my notes, so here goes. Hopefully this will give you a better idea of what I'm trying to do.

I go to a school that is notorious for surveilling students' social network activity and making sure that their life outside the classroom follows the same rules and morality code as dictated by the school inside the classroom. Students with confiscated cell phones are even required to give their passcode so the administration can browse through their text message history. Naturally, this feels like a violation of privacy for students, who are often unaware that the student handbook sanctions "random searches" of personal belongings or social networks. I wanted to create a private social network that disallows any access from staff or administration. Everything is a "walled garden." I want to do this because:

• It would be a fun project.
• It would be useful to students.
• I could potentially package it up and sell it to other communities.
• It would piss off the school administration, since there is absolutely nothing they can do to stop me.

So this is what I plan to offer with Ryyme (pronounced rhyme):

• A dedicated collaboration page, where students can work on homework, class projects, or share notes
• An open directory of student information (like you said in your post)
• A small-focus friend system, with groups of friends being allowed to form their own "posses"
• Facebook wall import/export
• Site-wide private / public (whichever you choose) chatroom. All users would be able to access a public text or audio chatroom. Posses can also form their own chatrooms.

These are a few of the ideas I had. I've made quite a few concepts for the site design and how it would function, but I'm going to start over again.