Galaxy of Emptiness

I was Bebo-ed recently. I was tired and decided to test out Bebo to see why it is so popular. I went through the registration process, but didn’t pay any attention to the invitation from Bebo to spam my entire addressbook. I agreed and all 800 people in my address book received my Bebo invitation. Obviously, my in-box was overwhelmed with spam-back and questions from people on my address book.

It appears this type of aggressive user generated spamming is becoming all the norm. Flixster and SMS.ac are the two others getting some press lately. The biggest offenders are not being upfront.

SMS.ac - The practice had been to send an SMS to the friends every month until they signed up.
Flixster - doesn’t appear to clearly communicate the action to the user.
Plaxo - Currently getting more aggressive. I had to invite at least one person to get access to my plaxo list.
Bebo - Good feature. Vague copy about the invite action.

Will this be a short-term or will this be the method for all new sites?