Many media, not multimedia --- my mates are my media

These statements come from a blog decrying the current situation of the VLE and are based on the canvassing of the opinion of teenagers in several countries as to what their preferred Web-sites are.Another two statistics on Web-site usage obtained by the Nielsen/Netratings consultancy emphasizes this dilemma.
The first one gathered data from 12-17 year olds in the US of their preferred Web-site (1), and unsurprisingly perhaps the top 10 sites were mainly occupied by social networking sites with Facebook as clear front runner. When asked what they liked most about these sites they stated that they were able to not only customise the interface to make it 'theirs' but also the availability of third-party add-ons providing extra functionality in the form of avatars and 'flashboxes' thus extending the art of communication well beyond typed text.
A related study on young UK females in regards to the fastest growing Web-sites (2) drew a similar picture with social networking sites again dominating the top 10 spots.
Imagine these students entering Higher Education and being confronted with a static, stale interface called Virtual Learning Environment. Do we really believe that this generation will catch onto this? My hunch is that it will alienate them and will most likely be putting them off from online learning in each current form.It is therefore about time that developers take note of this situation and start creating a light-weight, flexible and unimposing online learning 'framework' presented to students who will then customise it to their gusto and subsequently populate it with content, as required for their studies, allowing them to display creativity in the process - surely this is learning at its best.
A simplified version of such a flexible environment is already in existence in the form of Netvibes (http://www.netvibes.com/) which delivers so called Personal Start Pages where components are added in the form of AJAX widgets which can be pulled onto the front page. What is required is an expansion on these principles - and an embedding into the institutional intranet so students have a standardised login (single-sign on). How long will this take?

(1) http://www.nielsen-netratings.com/pr/pr_070920.pdf
(2) http://www.nielsen-netratings.com/pr/pr_071127_UK.pdf