“Creepy treehouse is what a professor can create by requiring his students to interact with him on a medium other than the class room tools. [E.g.] requiring students to follow him/her on peer networking sites such as Twitter or Facebook.” – excerpt via Mr. Jared Stein – Flexknowlogy
When this happens, students often feel like teachers/professors are invading their online privacy when required to follow or friend their teacher on these social networking sites. Are teachers using these online tools to update students on things they need to know or assign homework, or is it strictly a social motivation? This article, http://chronicle.com/blogs/profhacker/the-creepy-treehouse-problem/23027, tends to think its all social and bad pedagogy which I agree with.
In my opinion, this phenomenon is somewhat out of date, as there are so many different ways of interacting and/or getting information back and fourth between students and teachers on a more professional level without using personal social sites. I think using different apps and online tools take the "creepiness" factor out. Years ago, all we had was My Space, Facebook or Twitter, but now there are more online tools than we can keep track of!
Below is a link to another article on this, as well as a quick survey for me.
https://www.purdue.edu/learning/blog/?p=210