Automatic viral marketing, not social spamming

There’s a fairly new trend in the viral marketing world where a web service will help users spread the service automatically. For instance, when you create a widget on Slide, you can enter your MySpace login and they will paste the code for you. This is excellent because there are still many users who don’t like to mess around with copy and pasting. If you ask it to, Slide will also post a bulletin to notify your friends about your new widget. This is good for the user and good for the service since it spreads itself virally. So far, this would not be considered social spamming. However, you can go over the line: check out this example featuring Idio Magazine. Note that Idio corrected the problem and did so with humor and verve.