Flicker photo: alanakWhat's the difference between magical and creepy? It's one of those "I know it when I see it" things -- and I can tell you that right now, I feel like I'm smack dab in the middle of a Tim Burton movie. It's hard for me to tell if I should be delighted or scared out of my wits. 

One of the things we all love about the social web is that it's so much easier to share than ever before. We're social creatures, we humans, and we love that we can peek in and comment on so many of our friends' lives so easily. Ask my husband: he stopped reading sports and gossip web sites and spends all his surfing time on Facebook now.  

What we've hated about the social web is how siloed all those conversations have been. For several years, what happened on Facebook stayed in Facebook. We clamored, even begged, for our social web experience to be more cohesive, to take our conversations and our "friends" wherever we went in the social web. "Mr.Zuckerberg," we cried, "tear down this wall!"

I'm one of those people. I firmly believe that the more open the web is, the more useful it will be to the social sector. If visitors to our sites can log in to Facebook when they want to leave a comment on a blog post, and they can update their Facebook status when they leave that comment automatically, that's a win for us. In my book, that's the chocolate river surrounded by the candy forest -- magical!

But I'm not so swept up by the magic that I don't recognize the creepy. Oompa Loompas? Creepy. Instant Personalization? At least a little creepy.

Turns out that what your high school economics teacher told you is true: there's no such thing as a free lunch. The currency we use to we pay for the convenience, the magic even, of the open social web is our privacy. The trade off between transparency and privacy has always, and will always exist.

For some, this trade-off is unthinkable. For others, it isn't worth a thought. I want to stress that Facebook -- or Yelp, or Pandora, or Docs.com -- aren't evil indentity thieves. They're simply giving us what we've asked for: a more seamless web experience. 

But there are two responsibilities that need to be met for this emerging web to skew magical, not creepy:

• Social sites need to let us opt IN to these kinds of services, not force us to opt out. And they shouldn't make us opt out in multiple places. These are new technologies and the ramifications are still unknown. Like clinical trial subjects, let us decide if we're willing to take the risks.
• We, the consumers, are responsible for our behavior on the web. Again, like trial subjects, we can't just say "Oh, they'll pay me" without thinking about what they're paying us to do. We need to recognize that these are untried and untested waters we're in and learn as much as we can about it beforehand so we can make good choices in the future. Our privacy is ultimately our responsibility.

As for me, I've opted out of Instant Personalization -- for now. I'll wait a little longer to see if cashing in my golden ticket is worth it.

Here are a few of the articles you might find useful about Facebook's Instant Personalization program:

• Facebook's Instant Personalization is the Real Privacy Hairball, Gigaom
• The Ultimate Guide to 11 Facebook Changes, and What they Mean, Huffington Post
• How to Opt Out of Facebook's Instant Personalization, Electronic Frontier Foundation