The dangers of social networking sites for kids are well known, with there being cases of sexual predators using sites such as MySpace to meet kids. Sure, kids aren’t meant to be using services such as MySpace, but it’s not hard for them to pretend to be older in order to sign up.

A US company, Industrious Kids, has launched a new social networking web site called Imbee.com, which is designed to provide a safe haven for kids aged between eight and 14. Before an account for a childen can be set up, a parent needs establish their own identity and to authorise the membership using a credit card. The child’s profile is only accessible by invited family and friends, and is not indexed by search engines such as google. Imbee costs $3.95 per month for one adult and two children.

It will be interesting to see whether the protected environment of Imbee.com will be as interesting to Tweens as MySpace.