Google is an extremely rare example of natural growth. Many found Facebook's contact importer in its early days to be deceptive (and many more still do). Their growth to more than a billion users was almost inevitable - as long as they could spam dozens or hundreds of people for each new user. LinkedIn is yet another example of success-by-spamming, and Facebook's "cleaning up" of Zynga and thousands of other smaller, similar businesses built on Facebook is an example of what I was referring to when I said that companies block the very kind of behavior that got them to where they are once they are big enough to do so. They do whatever they have to do to get through the door, then they shut it behind them.

Is spamming/other bad behavior "necessary" for Internet success? That's an interesting question. I can only think of a small handful of successful Internet companies that magically went viral without such aggressive "growth hacking". The overwhelming evidence is that "necessary" may be a strong word, but "highly unlikely without it" is probably an accurate description.