Robert Scoble is a melodramatic guy.  He thinks that because the current crop of social networks might stay closed that the Net itself is in danger.  That's only true if you think the Net as it stands today is broken, which I don't.  It's going through puberty.

He bases his assumption that the sky is falling on the fact that FaceBook is closed to Google, and he thinks Microsoft's (NASDAQ:MSFT) bid for Yahoo's (NASDAQ:YHOO) search engine is an attempt to keep FaceBook's data hidden from the Web and accessible only to Microsoft customers.  Somehow this translates to:

"Google is locked out of the Web that soon will be owned by Microsoft. We will never get an open Web back if these two deals happen."

Come on.

This is only true if you think all of the entrepreneurs out there have stopped hacking away at night at something much better than FaceBook or any of today's social networks.  Do you really think innovation will stop because FaceBook remains closed?  Did that help CompuServe or AOL?

"Don’t think this matters? It sure does. Relevancy on Yahoo search will go through the roof when it has access to Facebook data and Google doesn’t. People will see that Yahoo has people search (something I’ve asked Google for for years) and Google doesn’t. That’ll turn the tide in advertising, and all that."

Good, at least somebody will have it until we get to the next-generation Web.  It's not worth hyperventilating about.

And yes, as long as HTTP keeps working the Web will be alive and well.  As long as the roads are fine other people can show up to the party at any time.