to everyone who called him a spammer: I think there's a big difference between a botnet brainlessly shooting out thousands of copies "Your sperm will become self-conscious and start carving - with SpermaMAX" and trying to target people who actually might want to buy the book.
This seems closer to the guy who used AI-magic to find people who'd tweeted about books and to tweet other recommendations to them. Both of them tried to pick people who seemed like they might be remotely interested.
I think it depends on whether your definition of how spammy something is has to do with relevance or permission. I tend to think that permission has a lot more to do with it.
If I sign up for a mailing list, I've given them permission to contact me. Even if they never send me something I care about, it's not spam (assuming that the email sent is related to what the list purported to be about).
If I have a personal friend who, as an inside joke, likes to send me links to penis enlargement sites, that's not spam, although if it's too common, he might find himself filtered out or not my friend any more.
If someone I have no other connection with decides to contact me with a commercial offer, that's spam. I haven't given them permission to send me that sort of thing. Even if the offer is relevant to me, it's still spam.
Signing up for Facebook pretty clearly gives people who you know to contact you with friend requests. It doesn't give random people trying to sell something that permission, so their doing so is spammy.
This seems closer to the guy who used AI-magic to find people who'd tweeted about books and to tweet other recommendations to them. Both of them tried to pick people who seemed like they might be remotely interested.
If this is spam, it's a lite form of it, right?