Encouraging the cross marketing and viral promotion of iPhone game is one of the features all the social network platforms attempt to fulfil.

But as well as letting you check out what your friends are playing, OpenFeint is taking a more direct approach with OpenFeint Gold, its new recognition program.

This is an additional marketing channel that will see the games the company considers to be "of extraordinarily high quality" promoted on the OpenFeint website, on the OpenFeint in-app dashboard, and on partner websites.

The first game to gain such status is the much admired and top selling Fieldrunners.

"Subatomic Studios is proud to have Fieldrunners recognised as the very first OpenFeint Gold title. Since our launch, we've worked hard to create extra content for the iPhone and bring the game to many other platforms, including the PSP and DSi. We're excited to be once again refreshing the iPhone hit with more platform-specific features and content," said Ash Monif, COO Subatomic Studios.

"The new and improved Fieldrunners marches onto App Stores worldwide this holiday season"

"I'm personally very excited to bring this program to our game development community," said Jason Citron, founder and CEO of Aurora Feint, the developer of OpenFeint.

"When we launched Aurora Feint: The Beginning, on 11th July 2008, I was delighted to get recognition from all over including game of the year on the iPhone and this is our way of recognising other incredible quality games."

To date, almost 300 titles OpeFeint-enabled titles are live in the App Store, including hits such as Pocket God, RollerCoaster Rush and Stick Wars. More than 700 games are currently in development.

OpenFeint v2.3 is freely available for download.