Thomson Reuters Deals Intelligence data has revealed upwards of US $5 billion of venture capital investment has been injected into growing web companies in the first 4 months of this year.

This means 2011 is on course to be the busiest in dollars terms since way back in 2000, when the web was really starting to take off. More than US $55 billion was shared back then.

Valuations for Facebook (US $70 billion) and GroupOn (US $15 billion) are believed to be one of the reasons for the growing investments in web start ups.