It looks like the alpha version of PeopleAggregator launched today. And they are inviting people to use it. And by inviting, I mean sending blanket e-mails out to people. Some people call that spam. Marc defends the process in this post saying they are only spamming people who have spammed them, saying that's where they got the e-mail addresses from. As Jason notes in the comments, they've been spamming many of the internal authors mailing lists we have for all of our metroblogging cities. At one point Marc was an author on the San Francisco Metblog so it wouldn't be a huge leap for him to assume other cities have similar mailing lists as the one he was on in SF, but it is a pretty huge leap to try and say all the authors in those cities have spammed him in the past and therefor deserve the spam he's sending out today. (Luckily, to prevent this kind of thing, these are members only lists, and anything to sent to them by addresses that aren't subscribed are autodeleted.) For a service waving the "Open Social Networking" banner, that's a bad way to make friends on the first day of school.

Update: I personally hadn't been invited yet, however I made this post just before 6PM, and by 6:20PM I had 10 invites in my inbox. E-mail is after the jump

From: invite@peopleaggregator.net Subject: Your most awaited invite to PeopleAggregator! Date: June 26, 2006 6:16:52 PM PDT To: sean bonner

Hi,

Thanks for your patience and your desire to be a part of PeopleAggregator.
With great pride we inform you that the PeopleAggregator is now live. Below mentions
the link using which you can register on PeopleAggregator and further enhance your
Digital Lifestyle.

With your own personalised blog, groups, networks, media galleries give a facelift
to your existence on the web.

Welcome to PeopleAggregator!!

Click here to join People Aggregator:
http://peopleaggregator.net

Use following username and password to enter:
UserName: paalpha
Password: paalpha

Regards,
People Aggregator Team