Here's a little encouraging news from the venture community.

Venture capitalists poured $7.7 billion into 744 startups in the second quarter of 2010, up 13% from the 656 deals that received funding from the same period a year ago, according to the latest stats from Dow Jones VentureSource.

It's also the highest dollar amount since the third quarter of 2008, right before the venture community went into a cave.

Later-stage investing picked up as 44% of the deals were later-stage companies, this is up from 39% of the number of deals in the same period a year ago. Seed- and early-stage startups accounted for 32% of deals, down from 35% in the second quarter last year. 

The Web-heavy of special interest, the web-heavy Consumer Information Services sector saw 92 deals raise $710 million.

The top deals in this category were Zynga, with $147 million raised in June, Groupon raised $135 million in April; Playdom raised $33 million in June; HauteLook raised $31 million in June; Xobni raised $16 million April; Hi5 Networks raised $14 million in late June; Hungry Machine raised $14 million in April; Blip Networks raised $10 million in May; 7 Star Entertainment raised $10 million in June and Beyond Oblivion raised $10 million in April.

(image source: wordstream.com)