If the latter how do you avoid spam filters?
Check out www.isipp.com for email whitelisting services.
Try lyris or ecelerity software for sending out emails. It costs about $1,000 for a license but it is worth the money for the bounce handling, error reporting, setting different time-between sending messages to particular hosts, etc.
1 - Trust for the sender and recipient (we weren't masquerading as someone else, like NikePlus does)
2 - Trust for mail servers (so they're not receiving Gmail branded email from a non-Gmail server)
3 - Allowed integration with companies such as Exact Target who offer "deliverability" as a product (http://email.exacttarget.com/Services/Deliverability.html). This requires it to come from our domain
Facebook's approach seems like good etiquette; I've certainly never heard anyone complain about it...so I'm using a similar approach.
I don't know how to avoid spam filters other than what Googling for it gives me. It'd be interesting to hear what has worked from people who have actually had to do it.
I've seen both approaches - but it seems clear you'll get a better response using the individual's email.
If he's just talking about setting the From: header, wouldn't that make it even more likely to be marked as spam?
That's exactly what most sites that let you import contacts ask their users to do.