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.
The above chart is the result of initial access – below are the results of repeat access, when a lot of data is already cached:
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!
You can always just use http://Twiter.com?status=TEST in your retweet button. You’d loose some stats I guess, but there might be a clever work around for that too.
This is not good for Tweetmeme. What are you using as an alternative, Topsy? I lot of my fellow bloggers have switched, now I know why.
Thanks.
@Ileane