Our apps now have RSS feeds for system notices

Never miss an important system notice again: point your favourite RSS reader at the following feeds to stay in the loop and receive updates on our Facebook apps as they happen.

Scratch and Win: scratchit.bstage.ca/scratchit/index.rss
Pull Tabs: scratchit.bstage.ca/pulltabs/index.rss
Mind Games: scratchit.bstage.ca/mindgames/index.rss

Right now the stories are sorted by oldest to newest, but we'll be fixing that early next week.

Systems notices are the events that we post to the Game History on the Play page. These notices often announce important upcoming changes or new content.

I'm subscribing using Basil, the free RSS reader plug-in for Yahoo Messenger.

Backstage dominates list of Top 20 Most Engaging Facebook apps

In a recent post on the blog All Facebook entitled The Top 20 Most Engaging Facebook Apps, we are pleased to find three of our applications in the top 10, including the top spot held by Slots. In discussing Scratch and Win, author Nick O'Neill states that

Backstage... is sitting on a pretty nice suite of gambling applications. When ranking applications for profitability, I would rank this company up near the top.

Check out the post for the full story.

Friendster, anyone?

We are pleased to announce that Scratch and Win and Pull Tabs are now on the social networking website Friendster!

Before you groan and say "Friendster is so over" don't be so quick to count out the former recipient of Time Magazine's 50 Coolest Websites of 2004 award. Friendster is aggressively seeking (and gaining) patent protection for some of its social networking innovations. And with a new boss and new venture capital, it could be poised to take a run at the likes of MySpace, Facebook, and Bebo.

Interestingly, almost all Internet users in the Philippines have a Friendster account. In other words, Facebook is to Canada as Friendster is to the Philippines.

Here is what Friendster has to say about itself.

With more than 95 million members worldwide, Friendster is a leading global online social network. Friendster is focused on helping people stay in touch with friends and discover new people and things that are important to them. Online adults, 18 and up, choose Friendster to connect with friends, family, school, social groups, activities and interests. Friendster prides itself in delivering an easy-to-use, friendly and interactive environment where users can easily connect with anyone around the world via www.friendster.com and m.friendster.com from any Internet-ready mobile device. Friendster has a growing portfolio of patents granted to the company on social networking, with more expected over the next several months.