It has come to my attention, over the last few years most of all the top social-networks (facebook, bebo, etc) naming a few... are all linked to one real method of growth.

1) User recieved e-mail in the inbox from a friend telling them to join Facebook

We can analyse that this e-mail was sent from facebook's mailing servers and that the email was never sent from the friends receiptant address or IP.

2) You are in the sign-up process and you reach a "invite your friends to this service" page... you sign-in to your 'contact address book' on yahoo/aol/msn/gmail etc...then facebook rolls out friend invites to those who are not part of the site -for those who are they simply tell them you joined and ask you to confirm them as a friend

What can we analyse here... by this point the site is a viral worm, every sign-up has the oppertunity to grow 50-500+ sign-up on average this may very depending on the users contact list.

Fact is all social-networks really are, is a viral method of making their site grow overnight/weekend... and at what point is the legality of this system going to stop or be made legal for everyone

Are we allowed to have the same system to tell our friends about our sites to tell their friends to join up and make our million bucks?

Answer: i dont think we are. (spam reasons).