Byron: said the government should seek to influence social networking sites into drawing up codes of practice. Photograph: Eamonn McCabe

Social networking websites should be encouraged to adopt voluntary codes of practice to help protect young users, according to the government review of child internet safety conducted by Dr Tanya Byron.

Byron said in the report that despite the concerns about the volume and diversity of online content, the majority of material is hosted by a handful of very popular sites, such as Facebook, MySpace, Bebo and YouTube.

She added that a realistic goal for the government is to concentrate on reducing the availability of inappropriate or harmful content by influencing those sites.

“The incentive for signing up to one of these codes would be the opportunity for companies to promote themselves as responsible businesses with an interest in child safety,” said Byron in the review.

“It would be against the interest of children if codes were so prescriptive that they stifled innovation and meant companies based their safety measures on compliance with a lowest common denominator … so an effective code would include a set of safety principles on which companies could base their approach.”

An example of how a code could work in practice is with the privacy policy on social networking sites, which might agree on a higher default setting for users under 18.

One site might meet the code by only allowing invited friends to access young users’ profiles, while another might allow users with shared interests to connect but with clear guidance on how to limit the information they give to strangers.

Google has invested $1 million in Comsenz, a Chinese provider of social network software. It’s yet another move by Google to gain a foothold in China.

that Google is preparing to launch a joint music download venture in China, largely to take on Chinese search engine The investment occurred in July as part of Comsenz’s second round of venture funding, and it was recently revealed in a regulatory filing . Rumors about the investment previously pegged Google’s portion at $5 million. The news follows a reportBaidu.com, which has been beating Google by offering free music.

As for Google’s American competition, Microsoft has a direct presence in China, while Yahoo owns a large stake in Chinese online marketplace Alibaba.com.

Beijing-based Comsenz provides bulletin board and social networking software, as well as hosting services, to Chinese websites. (We don’t have any more details — not surprisingly, the company’s website is in Chinese.)

Comsenz is backed by former Google board member Michael Moritz. Moritz is a non-managing member at Sequoia Capital China, which owns more than 10 percent of the Chinese company. He left Google’s board last May.

Separately, Google revealed it acquired Peakstream, a company that makes it easier to run applications on multiprocessor systems and thus should help Google boost its internal server architecture, for about $20.3 million (see p. 39). That means Peakstream’s investors lost money on the deal. Peakstream soaked up $23 million over two years (our coverage) from venture firms Foundation, Kleiner Perkins — and yes, there’s that connection again — Sequoia Capital. Kleiner and Sequoia, both original investors in Google, each took in about one-fourth of the acquisition proceeds. Kleiner’s John Doerr also sits on the board of Google.

Microsoft has announced collaborations that will see Windows Live more tightly integrated with the world’s top five social networking sites.

The software giant is working with Facebook, Bebo, Hi5, LinkedIn and Tagged to exchange a set of APIs which allow users to easily and securely move their contacts and relationships between services.

“Social networks are becoming a fundamental way in which we communicate, and we are happy to be a part of that,” said a spokesman for Microsoft.

“These partnerships will enhance our users’ online experiences and the way in which they choose to communicate with their friends and families.”

Users will be able to invite their Windows Live Contacts to join them on the social networking services without the need for screen-scraping, or providing private user credentials to outside networks.

“We continue to explore ways to open up Facebook in safe and secure ways that benefit our users and we are working with Microsoft, a trusted partner, to test a new data portability initiative,” said a spokeswoman for Facebook.

“Facebook will continue to work with other trusted partners to explore new initiatives around data portability.”

As part of this collaboration, Microsoft is introducing a new Windows Live Messenger website where users can invite contacts from any of the five social networks to join them.

The service is live today on Facebook and Bebo, and will become live on Hi5, LinkedIn and Tagged in the coming months.

Business social network LinkedIn today revealed further details of its partnership with global website BusinessWeek.com.

Business Week - working with corporate intelligence company Capital IQ - will provide company data for LinkedIn’s new company profile pages, which were announced earlier this year (NMA 25.03.08).

BusinessWeek.com has added a feature called Company Insider, through which users see whether their contacts have appeared in Business Week
articles. This represents one of the first applications to go live on LinkedIn,

“These new features expand the impact and reach of our content to both BusinessWeek.com’s 8m unique users and LinkedIn’s network of more than 20m registered professionals,” said Roger Neal, senior vice president and general manager of BusinessWeek Digital.

“We are pleased to be working with LinkedIn to offer these valuable new tools to business professionals.”

iNovia Capital, a manager of seed and early stage venture capital funds, announced today the launch of its second fund, iNovia Investment Fund II L.P. (”iNovia II”), a $107 million Canadian seed and early stage venture capital fund focused on the information technology, life sciences and cleantech sectors.iNovia Capital, which recently completed iNovia II’s second closing, obtained the support of important investors from within Canada and abroad including: Consensus Business Group, Caisse de depot et placement du Quebec, FIER Partners, BDC Capital, AVAC Ltd., Solidarity Fund QFL, Export Development Canada (EDC), Fondaction, McGill University’s Endowment fund, the University of Alberta, Universite de Sherbrooke, Bishop’s University Foundation CSN, Gestion Univalor L.P. and Telesystem Ltd., as well as a number of strategic angel investors.

“iNovia Capital provides entrepreneurial capital to the companies it backs. We are indeed pleased to have attracted, as investors in iNovia II, a diverse group of institutions and individuals who share our vision and approach,” said Mark de Groot, President & CEO of iNovia Capital. “With iNovia’s expanded presence across Canada, we will continue to execute on our seed and early stage investment strategy, and further build out our North American network of co-investors and deal flow providers, in order to generate strong returns for our stakeholders.”

In preparation for the launch of iNovia II, Shawn Abbott joined the management team as Partner in 2007. Shawn brings to the team over twenty years of experience as a technology entrepreneur, an angel investor and a venture capitalist. This experience includes serving as CTO and then President of Rainbow Technologies (NASDAQ: RNBO) where he consolidated three divisions, built a management team to return the US$70 million business to profitability and growth, and positioned it for a successful sale in 2004 at nearly half a billion USD. Prior to joining Rainbow, Shawn established and built the AND group, which pioneered a widely used encryption-based CD-ROM software distribution system. Shawn was most recently general partner with the Alberta-based venture capital fund SpringBank TechVentures.