Creepy Treehouses and ill-formed thoughts

Are Institutional Portals and VLEs Really “Creepy Treehouses”? « UK Web Focus: "I first came across the term “creepy treehouse” during Ewan McIntosh’s plenary talk on “Unleashing the Tribe” at the IWMW 2008 event. Alan Cann mentioned it again in a recent comment on one of my blog posts, suggesting, I think, that the University of Bristol’s MyBristol portal is an example of a ‘creep treehouse” which we should avoid building."

Useful article from Brian Kelly on creepy treehouses and VLEs...

Have been mulling this over a lot myself lately but haven't got anything coherent to say about it yet other than I do think that there is relevance for the term in describing some of the developments which are happening in eLearning / blended learning in the UK. There is something unsettling about the OU's 'MyStuff' for example. Would they really have called it "MyStuff" without there having been a "MySpace" first? Anyway... ill-formed thoughts 'r' me at the moment about it all... I think there's a mismatch between the intention of educational institutions to deliver services which resonate with students, and the perception of those services by the end users - the students. More thinking required...