I don't know about you but chatting through IRC and Skype is real human interaction to me. The experience is not certainly fake. With regards to team cohesion,

I don't know about you but chatting through IRC and Skype is real human interaction to me. The experience is not certainly fake. With regards to team cohesion, there is no guarantee that you can have achieve that with in-person teams. But the bottom-line here is that do you want to have the best talents working for you or not?