Why is it that these various social networking and other sites seem to simply consider the incidental spam attendant to address book importing (if they think about it at all) to be the cost of doing business - and, mind you, a cost sent COD to the people receiving the spam - when in fact it’s really an occupational hazard?

Doesn’t Bebo realize that the reason that the spam from Bebo ended up in our junk folder is precisely because of these not-best practices? (We’ve written at some length on the business hazards of these practices over on our corporate blog here and here.)

Haven’t they learned from Flixster’s experience, and the dozens of comments from people complaining about the Flixster address book importing spam, and Flixster’s CEO’s ineffectual attempts to explain away the spam?

Do they really want their Wikipedia entry to have an entire section dedicated to their spamming and “common complaints”, like Flixster does?

Of course, Flixster is hardly the only company guilty of this practice, which is getting more and more common. Facebook,

Which brings us back to the primary question, which is: why are they doing it, if it leads to spam, bad feelings about their company, and more?

The pat, and somewhat superficial, answer is “because everyone’s doing it.” But the underlying reason is because the more users that a social networking site can boast, the more its perceived worth, and the more its perceived worth, the greater the likelihood of a big fat cashout payday, when someone buys them. In other words, they want to make themselves into an attractive acquisition target, and to do that they need to bloat their user rolls.

In the end, yes, it’s all about money. After all, what’s more important - the integrity of your inbox, or their cashing out?

Remember the days when people started businesses because, you know, they wanted to be in that business?