The Cost of Social Media Buttons

Yesterday I was examining Firefox memory usage when I noticed that social media buttons (you know the “like”, “follow” buttons) were using vastly more memory then the actual content of the page itself.

Firefox about:memory

Firefox about:memory

The page itself uses 6.5 Meg with an additional 4.5 Meg for javascript. But the remaining 34 Meg of memory usage comes from the various social media buttons on the screen.

Social media buttons

Social media buttons

Social media buttons

Social media buttons

That is a massive overhead just to display a couple of buttons on the screen!

Finally a big thanks to Nicholas Nethercote and the other Mozilla MemShrink team members who have done so much to reduce the memory overhead of these things in the past two years.