Harold, I share your experiences about building bonds and shared understanding through blogging, twitter and other occasional/informal interaction tools. However, their effect on work is very indirect and, actually, at the first sight, reading blogs or putting informal update on twitter is unproductive.

I often find it challenging to explain to people who have a business problem (~communication breakdowns around getting things done) that spending time doing fun and not directly productive things will actually help them with being more productive at the end. Wondering if you have any experiences/ideas on how to do it...