Has IKEA Changed Furniture Shopping?

IKEA has become one of the most notorious home furniture shops in the world, and this is obvious through the predominance of their furniture.

Targeting a common market, they offer home wares and furniture for nearly all applications. Because of this you will be hard pushed to find someone who has not purchased IKEA furniture some time in their life.

However IKEA furniture tends to lack any individualism to it, and this is commonly reported by the IKEA opposition. You will find that the majority of IKEA furniture has a distinct nordic style, and is built to a budget. Because of this you will find that the majority of the furniture is flat pack, and it has become synonymous that flat pack furniture is of low quality.

This has sparked a debate over flat pack furniture and hand made furniture, and which is the better bang for your buck?

It is typically argued that the extra spending is fully justified when comparing hand made furniture to flat pack furniture, however The Logical Directory have published an excellent article on flat pack vs hand made furniture.

Facebook In Decline?

It seems that the Facebook boom is now starting to see a decline in their growth-rate, with recent posted figures showing that the growth rate has dropped over the last 2 months.

Speculation has suggested that the user base would have hit 1 billion people by the end of the year (2011). However with current figures it is a lot more likely that the user base will only just hit the plus side of 800 million. With current standings the user following is just shy of 700 million, however the active user statistics has gone un-published.

Many would suggest this growth is only rivalled by alternative social media platform; Twitter. Since 2006 Twitter has seen many ups and downs in growth and has really seen an upsurge in 2011. Website Monitoring has actually produced an info-graphic to depict their growth over the last few years - Infographic

One of the contributing factors for the decline in growth of Facebook has been attributed to the rise of alternative social networking and blogging platforms. Many people are using these as a developed method of publishing their writing, keeping in contact with friends and distributing news. Recent trends and statistics release could indicate that the whole social networking and blogging may be in general decline. Some example stats are -
Rate It All - Traffic down 9% over last month
Tweako - Traffic up 9% over last month
Faves - Traffic down 28% over last month
Diigo - Traffic down 1% over last month
MyLinkVault - Traffic down 8% over last month
A1 Webmarks - Traffic down 2% over last month
Google Bookmarks - No stats available

Utilising a mixture of these sites many people are able to advance their online writing and networking to many other states and even nationwide. People are also exploiting these methods for business and other advertising matters. This has recently wained in popularity and is a lot more evident within Facebook advertising, and this obtrusive advertising has deterred many users from frequent or returning visits.

Tools To Make Your Blogging Easier

I have recently come across a great set of tools from leading blogger Chipp Thomas, and thought its worth everyone knowing about this.

Located on his site at http://www.chippthomas.com, the page lists some of Chipps popular blogging tools which is promised to be regularly updated.
Including a range of productivity increasing tools as well as inspirational tools, you are sure to find something to make your blogging experience a little bit easier.

I for one know that maintaining all your online properties can be a bit hectic. I have a friend who has around 8 blogs so I can only sympathise for her, but these suggestions will make it a little more smooth.

I for one am now following Chipp, he has some amazing posts already and he offers some great advice for us bloggers, so get over there and let him know your feedback!