IMO BranchOut is even worse, their page now features a very clever and very evil "spam your friends" feature in disguise.

The worst thing is this kind of crap is very effective. Look at Zynga, they've built a billion dollar company out of it.

Yep. What's sad is that because of BranchOut's pedigree, they'll probably get the Zynga treatment. Make enough money for Silicon Valley VCs, through a few pennies at local charities and, like magic, your sins are erased and you've got the TechCrunch CEO of the year.