Yet another link for a. (I just coined a new abbreviation… YALA):

https://twitter.com/davewiner/status/348647381417476097

Related to the ongoing discussion on social networking and productivity, NYT has article on coffeehouses in the late 1600s.

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/23/opinion/sunday/social-networking-in-the-1600s.html?partner=rss&emc=rss&_r=0

“In England in the late 1600s, very similar concerns were expressed about another new media-sharing environment, the allure of which seemed to be undermining young people’s ability to concentrate on their studies or their work: the coffeehouse. It was the social-networking site of its day.”

(…)

“A study published in 2012 by McKinsey & Company, the consulting firm, found that the use of social networking within companies increased the productivity of “knowledge workers” by 20 to 25 percent.”

(…)

“But the lesson of the coffeehouse is that modern fears about the dangers of social networking are overdone. This kind of media, in fact, has a long history: Martin Luther’s use of pamphlets in the Reformation casts new light on the role of social media in the Arab Spring, for example, and there are parallels between the gossipy poems that circulated in pre-Revolutionary France and the uses of microblogging in modern China.”