J2Play, based in Waterloo, has landed a fbFund grant of $250,000. Founded by Rob Balahura in 2000, J2Play is a ?viral distribution framework for existing Web, Mobile, and PC casual games that helps them move their business to the social web.?

J2Play offers game developers a social wrapper that allows players to chat with their friends, receive awards, rank on leader boards, place advertisements, and generate revenue by promoting other games. The wrapper reaches across social networks, so for example: a Facebook user playing a game of Texas Hold?em Poker could play with one friend who is using their mobile phone and chat with another friend playing within Myspace.

Extreme Venture Partners, run by Amar Varma and Sunny Madra, had already invested a seed round in J2Play and no doubt played a large role in helping J2Play land the fbFund grant. Pretty good value-add for J2Play and a great way in leverage, validate, and de-risk the investment for XVP. This didn?t happen overnight, XVP has been working with J2Play since at least StartupCamp Toronto 1 back in December of 2007.

This fbFund grant doubles the company?s runway and is a big win. Facebook is about as good a strategic partner as one can get for a company like J2Play. Having Facebook onboard also might make it less likely that J2Play will be run over by Facebook launching a Games platform of their own? but you never know.

While we have been pretty critical of the hoards of folks building Facebook Apps and pitching those apps as scalable businesses, it was hard not to be impressed by the enthusiasm. Each Facebook Camp in Toronto has attracted over 400 attendees and Facebook often had an official representative at each event. There is a bigger picture here, companies out in Silicon Valley are paying attention to what we have going on up here in Canada.

Howard Lindzon, the founder of WallStrip and a partner at Knightsbridge Capital Partners, made a post today that I think is worth talking about.

Howard spends most of his time in Pheonix, is an adviser to startups at TechStars and has done a lot of his own investing in US based startups. He thinks that things are just starting to heat up in Canada and that while there may be all sorts of problems in the US, things are stable here.

As you all know, I am very long Canada and have spent the summer getting a better feel for the landscape. I think that Toronto is the most undervalued (real estate) of the big, global cities and that combined with Fred?s thoughts above and having RIMM so close to town and the Canadian Dollar so close to par, that the Canadian web scene will thrive for the foreseeable future.

Is Canada’s web startup scene on the brink of something great? Some days it feels like startups are getting started, investors are waking up and the whole world is at our door. Other days it feels like we have the most thankless job imaginable.

I don’t know the answer, but what I do know is that the tide is turning and that it is starting to make more sense than ever to start something great here. We may not be tripping over VCs when we go for a walk, but we are tripping over talented, eager and creative folks who want to build things, find markets and make money, and that is worth more than anything.

I don’t think it is just the real-estate that is undervalued here, I think it is you.

The next venture fund to go?

This is how to recruit.

This is how not to get hired.

Well.ca launched ImWell live chat – very cool.

Reminder – It?s a perfect time to do a startup.

Canadian founders do it harder.