I was having a conversation in a bar six months ago with a colleague and it slowly dawned on both of us that by being a friendquaintence with Some Big People In The Industry Who We Got Friendquaintenced With Before They Got Big, sort of gave me an aura of trustworthyness that I upheld but was largely unearned.
I think in many ways the positive-and-negative power of twitter is that the mixing of personal and professional leads to a lot more opportunities, for success and failure.
I don't think this is a bad thing, not even selfishly -- I think it's good that webs of trust work this way, I just wish there was a little more overtness to them. It was completely transparent to me until they brought it up, going "your background is a little wild for what i normally see with people like this, but you do live up to it"
