Shooty* said:
Reasons I don't think it was spam:
1. each message was individually written, rather than the same message sent to 3 trillion people
2. I did not try to sell viagra, v!@gra, or any similar product
3. I did not pretend to be a nigerian banker entrusted with £7 trillion which I needed to invest
4. I was not selling degrees
5. I was not pretending to be Ebay or a bank requesting you to enter your security details into a suspiciously named website
You did, however, send unsolicited email to strangers that contained a solicitation. And you did it over and over.
Not only is it spam, it's just so, well, gauche.
"Hey, I don't think you're worth the effort of getting to know here on your site, but why don't you drop what you're doing and dash over to my obviously more interesting site and join. Bye now, I can't be arsed to spend any more time on you."
On your rationale, does any friend request made through facebook to someone you have never met, yet with whom you share similar interests, amount to spam? If not, why not?
I don't do FaceBook or MySpace, and perhaps that sort of behavior is the norm there. If you had sent me a private message on, for example, this forum with no prior interaction between us, and that message was a solicitation to join some other group, I would have been...er...less than lady-like in my reply and complained to a moderator.
Look, it's like walking uninvited into someone's home, handing them a slightly wilted flower, urinating on the carpet, and hollaring "We have so much in common, you should come over to my house!", as you walk out the door.