Adriana Lukas on her blog, Tuesday morning:

This morning I found an email from Dennis Howlett whom I finally got to meet at Les Blogs 2.0 last month, recommending something called goowy as a new email client. The invitation was to set up an account and then let him know what I think.

...

When you sign up, you get to import all your contacts from your main email client. I use gmail and the import was smooth and effortless. Too effortless in fact, as I was clicking through the steps, there was a line at the bottom of the (visible) screen with a box checked, which only flashed before my eyes, as I was clicking 'continue'. It said 'send invitation to goowy to your contacts' or words to that effect. With horror I watched as responses (mostly out of office replies) started piling in into my new shiny inbox. You may say that I should have been more careful about proceeding to the next stage in the set up but you'd be wrong. I was setting up a simple email client, which is something I do all the time, when testing various new applications coming out of the blogosphere.

[source: Media Influencer - 'Goowy spam faux pas']

I had two invites (from the same person) to sign up for Goowy. Then I got six more from another person.

The so-called service (no, I'm not linking to it) handles contacts, calendar, email, rss etc etc.

I replied to the first writer that I don't like trusting personal information to unknown outsiders.

Bless my soul if the first thing Goowy does when it receives your contact list is to write to all your contacts inviting them to sign up.

[source: David Tebbutt - 'Goowy: don't']

And finally, Ben Metcalfe:

I've had a few of these sent to me this morning, and a few of my friends have emailed me to say how peeved and slightly embarrassed they are about it. I agree with their sentiment - I think it's a really arrogant thing for Goowy to have done ... Thanks Goowy for showing the world how not to launch a website!

[source: Ben Metcalfe - 'Don't sign up for goowy.com']

And what do you know, Goowy have a blog of their own. And what do you know, here's their entry for Tuesday:

We thought we did a good job of making it clear (the text was large and red to let people know) that if you clicked "import" and had the invite box checked that it would invite your contacts and you were doing so willingly. This was not at all intended as a malicious way to spam a user's contacts.

Since a few people have made this mistake we are removing the check from the check box. If you want to help goowy grow and invite your contacts please check it manually.

[source: Goowy Blog - 'Correction for import/invite of contacts']

The power of blogging versus the power of a less than thoroughly disguised viral email campaign, and a pretty convincing win for the bloggers there. Goowy insist they are 'sincerely very sorry for any problems this may have caused and want you to know that this was not our intent'. Draw your own conclusions and follow the source material to find out more.