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The Problem With TweetMeme

TweetMeme has become the de facto standard of retweet buttons, it’s hard to find a blog without it.  Little do we know just how slow it is – to be exact, how much it slows down site access.  This might not appear a big deal, until you we realize that Google now considers site speed as a factor in determining Page Rank.

I quickly ran my personal blog through the Web Page Test, and here’s what I got: TweetMeme is about the only killer, slower than anything by a long mile.


load time first

The above chart is the result of initial access – below are the results of repeat access, when a lot of data is already cached:


load time repeat

Not a pretty picture – but for now, I am leaving TweetMeme anyway… hoping for a solution soon.

Update: The animated image of the never-loading button is from a blog post that recommends a solution. I vaguely remember reading about the logic years ago – not just for TweetMeme, but all widgets – but the actual details go beyond my technical grade:   Install the TweetMeme Retweet Button… WITHOUT the Slow Page Loads!

(Cross-posted @ CloudAve)